material into every cell in his body. What that material might be, he cannot say. But the particular group of researchers at Refine’s Springville laboratories had been identifying those useful genes in everything from fungi to insects to lower animals that they believed would enhance the human immune system and increase longevity.
They had the best of intentions, and intentions mattered.
They’re all dead now, gone to ashes because some damn fool panicked and pressed the doomsday button, convinced that a release of programmed archaea into the environment would precipitate some genetic plague. But archaea are not bacteria; they can’t replicate the particular genetic material they brought with them into Shacket. Whatever it might be, that material was a onetime cargo with which the scientists loaded them. If Shacket is infected with biological catastrophe, he can’t pass it on to others, nor can these redesigned archaea, which have been engineered to be short-lived and incapable of reproduction.
Anyway, there is no biological catastrophe. He is stronger than he has ever been. His hearing and sense of smell are growing more sensitive by the hour.
His sight in particular is improving. When he turns to stare into the forest, the details of that woodscape resolve out of the steadily deepening shadows as they might for a cat. Felines have a degree of night vision thanks to the many-layered mirrors behind their retina.
And what secrets of the night can be seen by the multifaceted, metallic-sheen eyes of certain moths that thrive in darkness?
Instead of a biological catastrophe, Shacket is a triumph of science, a man becoming more than a man, the only one like him in the world, ascendant.
Leaving the coat in the car, holding the pistol at his side, he crosses two lanes of blacktop and enters another arm of the forest.
Guided by inerrant senses he didn’t previously possess, he makes his way through the trees and onto a lawn at the side of the Bookman residence. The house stands perhaps a hundred feet away.
He surveys the windows, some curtained and some not. No faces at any of them, no movement beyond. A stillness upon the house.
Shacket crosses the yard and moves along the side of the house. He comes to the back porch just as a woman—not Megan, apparently the housekeeper—comes through the back door, carrying what appears to be a bag of trash.
She doesn’t look toward him, descends the steps, and bustles around the farther side of the residence. She is older and of little interest to him, except he will have to kill her if she sees him.
He doesn’t want to kill her if it can’t be done quietly, and it probably can’t. He wants Megan to become aware of him only when he slips naked into her bed and wakes her in the night.
The moment the housekeeper is out of sight, he swings over the railing, onto the porch. He crosses to the door that she left open and steps into the kitchen.
The room is bright and clean and warm. The air is redolent of cooking odors.
He hears the lid of a trash can clatter into place outside. The older woman will be returning.
A swinging door leads into the hallway. He eases it shut behind him, stands listening. All is quiet until the housekeeper returns and begins attending to whatever tasks remain at the end of her day.
This house is large, but it’s not so grand that live-in help is required. When the housekeeper leaves, there will be just Megan, the mute boy, and Shacket.
Then there will be consequences for the disrespect with which he has been treated.
Before he reaches the front of the house and the main stairs, there is a side hall to the left. The walls here are decorated with Megan’s paintings, which tend to be large.
He has studied her art online. Initially, he wanted to like it. But he never could relate to it.
Now it seems even more absurd and childish than previously. He can’t comprehend her purpose or why anyone would purchase such art other than to burn it.
She obviously is not woke to the new world that is coming with unrelenting fury.
As technology races onward and with it enlightened thinking, as hidebound society is reshaped and outdated mores are consigned to the dustbin of history, as thrilling new social norms replace the old, as previous virtues come to be seen as mere weaknesses and raw power is rightly understood to be the sole remaining virtue, much will need to be burned. Shredded