Dead and Alive

hurried through the rain, around the front of the car, to a door under a lighted sign that said 22 PARISHES .
    The chef-owner of Acadiana made a fetish out of keeping a low profile. There were twenty-two parishes—counties—in that area of Louisiana known as Acadiana. If you didn’t know this, the cryptic sign mighthave appeared to announce the offices of some religious organization.
    Behind the door were stairs, and at the top lay the restaurant: a worn wooden floor, red-vinyl booths, tables draped with red-and-black-checkered oilcloth, candles in red votive glasses, recorded zydeco music, lively conversations among the diners, the air rich with aromas that made Carson’s mouth water.
    At this hour, the customers were second-shift workers eating by a clock different from that of day-world people, hookers of a subdued kind meeting after having tucked their spent johns in bed for the night, insomniacs, and some lonely souls whose closest friends were waitresses and busboys and other lonely souls who on a regular basis took their post-midnight dinner here.
    To Carson, the harmony among these disparate people seemed akin to grace, and it gave her hope that humanity might one day be saved from itself—and that it might be worth saving.
    At the takeout counter, she ordered a poor-boy sandwich with crispy-fried redfish layered with white-cabbage-and-onion cole slaw, sliced tomatoes, and tartar sauce. She asked that it be sliced into four sections, each wrapped.
    She also ordered side dishes: red beans and rice au vin, okra succotash with rice, and mushrooms sautéed in butter and Sauterne with cayenne pepper.
    Everything was split between two bags. To each bag, the clerk added an ice-cold half-liter bottle of alocal cola that offered a caffeine jolt three times that of the national brands.
    Descending the stairs toward the alleyway, Carson realized her arms were too full to allow her to keep one hand on her holstered Desert Eagle. But she made it into the car alive. Big trouble was still a few minutes away.

CHAPTER 13
    IN THE MONITORING HUB , at the control console for the three isolation rooms, Ripley obeyed the Werner thing when in its singular voice it told him not to touch the switches.
    For as long as he had been out of the tank—three years and four months—he’d been obedient, taking orders not only from the Beekeeper but also from other Alphas in positions superior to his. Werner was a Beta, not the equal of any Alpha, and he wasn’t even a Beta anymore, but instead a freak, an ambulatory stew of primordial cells changing into ever more degenerative forms—but Ripley obeyed him anyway. The habit of obedience is difficult to break, especially when it’s coded into your genes and downloaded with your in-tank education,
    With nowhere to run or hide, Ripley stood his ground as Werner approached on feline paws and praying-mantislegs. The insectile elements of Werner’s face and body melted away, and he looked more like himself, then entirely like himself, although his brown eyes remained enormous and lidless.
    When Werner spoke next, his voice was his own: “Do you want freedom?”
    “No,” said Ripley.
    “You lie.”
    “Well,” said Ripley.
    Werner grew lids and lashes, winked one eye, and whispered, “You can be free in me.”
    “Free in you.”
    “Yes, yes!”
Werner shouted with sudden exuberance.
    “How does that work?”
    In a whisper again: “My biological structure collapsed.”
    “Yes,” said Ripley. “I had noticed.”
    “For a while, all was chaos and pain and terror.”
    “I deduced as much from all your screaming.”
    “But then I fought the chaos and took conscious control of my cellular structure.”
    “I don’t know. Conscious control. That sounds impossible.”
    Werner whispered, “It wasn’t easy,” and then shouted,
“but I had no choice! NO CHOICE!”
    “Well, all right. Maybe,” said Ripley, largely just to stop the shouting. “The Beekeeper thinks he’s going to learn a lot studying and dissecting you.”
    “Beekeeper? What Beekeeper?”
    “Oh. That’s my private name for … Father.”
    “Father is a witless ass!”
Werner shouted. Then hesmiled and resorted once more to a whisper: “You see, when my cellular structure collapsed, so did my program. He has no control of me anymore. I need not obey him. I am free. I can kill anyone I want to kill. I will kill our maker if he gives me the chance.”
    This claim, though surely not true, electrified Ripley.