GeneSix Read online

  GENESIX

  By

  Brad Dennison

  Pine Bookshelf Publishing,

  Buford, Georgia

  GeneSix is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2012, 2013 by Brad Dennison

  All Rights Reserved

  To my incredible wife Donna, for simply being who she is.

  As many writers have stated before, and many probably will again, writing a novel is really a team effort. I was very surprised to learn this when I first started writing. I thought I would just sit down to a wad of paper with a pen in my hand and write away, and that would be all there was to it. In fact I owe a debt of thanks to many people who have helped out along the way. Some without even realizing it.

  Chancey King, who came up with some brilliant ideas. Without him, this novel wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun to write.

  Randy Stairs, who was there at the beginning, and who first introduced me to the wonderful world of storytelling, imagination, and geekdom. Blame him.

  My Dad, who first suggested I should take all this storytelling energy and harness it, and write a novel.

  Runa Saha, who encouraged me to keep going when I was feeling kind of discouraged early on. Runa is a geek extroadinaire.

  Sara King, who also offered encouragement, and some invaluable advice on punctuation.

  Gene Roddenberry, for introducing the world of television to real science fiction. And as such, introducing it to a much younger version of myself.

  Joss Whedon, for showing the world how to really tell a story.

  Eva Rines, my eighth grade English teacher, who introduced me to the world of Philip K. Dick. My life has never been the same. She has since passed onward, but somewhere I think she is looking down on this effort with a smile, and thinking, I taught that boy well.

  And most of all,

  My loving wife Donna, for always being there, when it’s easy and when it’s not so easy. Being the wife of a writer is no small thing. She also provides tech support, is a sounding board for ideas, and she can even cook. It’s like, man, she can do it all.

  A Few Words From the Author(that’s me)

  The novel you see before you was actually written in pieces, over a period of years. It was originally intended as a series of novellas and three of them were posted at one time on writing.com, under different titles. The intention was to introduce a group of meta-humans, and maybe give you, the reader, a feel as to what they are about and what their lives are like, and to get the ball rolling on some story arcs that will carry on into other novels.

  After a while, to give these characters better exposure, I decided t combine all five novellas together into one novel. As such, rather than being a story with a beginning, a middle and an ending, as is the case with most novels, what you have before you is an episodic story, essentially a small handful of stories with interconnecting and overlapping arcs.

  This version is a slightly re-edited version of the original. I updated some dialogue, and changed some wording. I also caught a few typos that had to be corrected. One thing about Indie writers – we don’t have access to copy-editors. Sometimes it shows. I ask you to be patient with us.

  GeneSix is the first of an intended series. More volumes are to follow. I hope you enjoy it. I would love to hear feedback from you. I can be reached at bradley.a.dennison.com and I’m on Facebook.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  He had been human, once. But that was long ago.

  He had been a child. He had run and played. He had gone to school and played on the slide at recess and threw a ball around with the other boys. Never girls, though. Girls had cooties, and you stayed away from them.

  He grew and began leaving his childhood years behind, and was knocking on the door of adolescence. And he discovered strangely, girls no longer seemed to have cooties. It was kind of cool how their hair sort of flowed over their shoulders, and some of them had hips that were getting kind of curvy, and he would watch the girls walk away, seeing how their butts kind of swayed back and forth as they moved. He wondered how he had never noticed this before.

  In the eighth grade, he found there was one girl he thought about way too much. Sondra Schwartz. Something about the way her hair sort of fell into her face and she had to keep sticking her lower lip out to blow the hair back up and away. And her hips did that to-and-fro thing when she walked. He never had the nerve to talk to her, though. She was kind of tall, and he was maybe four inches shorter and had funny-looking glasses, and she never looked twice at him. So he watched from a distance.

  This was what he was doing one afternoon - watching from a distance as Sondra and a couple friends walked along a sidewalk. They were talking, their heads tilting a bit in one direction or another as they did so, and an occasional hand would be lifted and flipped one way or another. He heard Sondra’s musical laugh. Man, he was smitten.

  He was standing on the sidewalk focusing intently on Sondra, and wasn’t aware of the three coming up from behind him. The bullies. Dirk Gardner had a buzz cut and wide shoulders for an eighth-grader (it was said he had stayed back at least once, and was really almost fifteen), and played on the school football team. Rance Milton was long and skinny and had a smile like a shark. He tagged along with Dirk wherever he went. He was given respect he never earned because he was one of Dirk’s cronies. And Mark Howard. Mark was usually a fairly decent kid, but he sometimes hung around with Dirk and Rance when he was bored just to see what kind of trouble they were going to stir up.

  “Now it’s time, puke-head,” Dirk said to the boy with glasses. “I said I was gonna break those glasses in two, and now I’m gonna do it. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  The boy tried to stand tough. After all, Sondra was still within listening distance. He couldn’t let her see him cower down. Not this time.

  He had been pushed around by Dirk and Rance for years, and cowering down had been how he stayed alive. They had done things like plant him upside down in a trash can. They pushed him fully dressed into the shower in the boy’s locker room once, so he had to go through the day dripping wet. But by cowering down and not getting Dirk too mad at him, they had never actually beaten him up to the point of breaking bones.

  But he was no longer a little kid anymore. He was almost a young man, and Sondra was within listening distance.

  Dirk said, glancing with a smile toward Rance, “And you know what else I’m gonna do? I’m gonna twist this loser’s arm around his back until he cries like a little girl. That’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna make him cry like a little girl.”

  Rance was smiling like a shark. “Yeah. Do it.”

  Oh no, the boy with the glasses thought. There was nothing he could do. And Sondra was within listening distance.

  Wait, there was one thing he could do. Her back was to him, so she wouldn’t see what he did.

  He turned and ran like hell. Ran as fast as his feet could move. He had been carrying a couple text books, but he just let them fly. He gave all he had into achieving the best speed he could. He had to get enough of a head start on Dirk and Rance that they might not bother to chase him down.

  He was so afraid, and trying to move so quickly, he didn’t hear the screeching tires until it was too late. He didn’t even feel the impact. He had a brief feeling of flying, and then he was crashing to the pavement.

  Dirk and Rance and Mark just stood, their mouths hanging open. The three girls walking turned to look over their shoulders, and one of them said, “Oh, my God,” and they stood, staring.

  Dirk turned and charged away. A
fter all, if he wasn’t there when the cops arrived, then maybe no one could claim it was his fault. Rance, ever a follower but not quite as quick a thinker as Dirk, stood a moment longer and then turned and ran after Dirk.

  Mark stood alone on the sidewalk, staring at the boy lying on the pavement. The boy’s eyes were shut, and his head was resting in a puddle of blood.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The boy awoke in a hospital bed. His head was wrapped in a white bandage, all the way to his cheekbones.

  “Mother?” he said, in a small, weak voice. He had intended to cry out, but a whimpering squeak was about all he could manage.

  He heard the warm voice of the woman who was for him the center of his life. “It’s all right, my son. I’m here.”

  He realized his neck was in a brace, and he could feel nothing below his shoulders. He was breathing on his own and could speak a little, but that was about all. He could somehow sense she was touching his hand though he couldn’t feel it.

  “Mother..,” he said, in a small voice.

  “You were in an accident,” she said.

  “Am I dead?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice. “No, no. You’re here with me.”

  “Everything is so foggy. So hazy.”

  “It’s the drugs. You’re full of painkillers.”

  “Mother? It’s so dark.”

  “I know. You had a terrible injury. They say you were bleeding inside your head, and they had to operate. Your head is bandaged.” She had always told him she would tell him the truth and she did so now. The warmth of her voice somehow had a soothing effect and made the truth easier to take.

  He said, “I can’t feel anything.”

  “The doctors said that might be a possibility.”

  “Will I ever get better?”

  “They don’t know. But we hope so.”

  And yet, he could somehow feel things. He knew the sheets were covering him to his chest. He knew there was another patient in the room, but a curtain had been drawn between the beds to give him and his mother some privacy. And he knew the lights were on. He could feel them above, in the ceiling, radiating down on him. Their luminescence felt hot on his face. In fact, almost uncomfortably hot.

  And he could feel the darkness. Swirling about, at first around him, then within him. Almost somehow becoming him. He wasn’t afraid. Somehow, the swirling darkness felt comforting.

  “It’s dark,” he said. “But it’s okay.”

  He could hear tears in his mother’s voice. “What’s happening to you is similar to what happened to me. It just affected me differently. It affects every one of us differently.”

  He realized his hand was somehow fading. His mother could see it, but no longer touch it. And he now no longer felt like he was in the bed, but instead above it, beside it, and even beneath it. He was all around.

  “The lights are getting dimmer,” she said. “Are you doing that?”

  “I don’t know,” the boy said, his voice now strong. “Mother, what’s happening to me?”

  “It’ll be all right. Don’t be afraid. I’m right here.”

  He knew she always would be. She loved him more than she loved anything else. That was one thing he had in this world, one thing he realized many other kids did not. Maybe that was why Dirk and Rance hated him so much.

  Dirk and Rance, he thought. He remembered. He had been running from them when a car struck him. But they no longer mattered to him. What now mattered was he was somehow flying about the room, somehow filling the room with his presence.

  It was dark outside. Must be night, he thought. One window was open a crack, and he slipped through it and was suddenly outside. Moving. Flying. One moment he could swirl about almost like some sort of living fog, and the next he could zip across the city, moving almost as fast as thought itself.

  Dirk was sitting on the back porch of his house, with Rance. Dirk had a cigarette going.

  Rance was saying, “Do you think that little puke is gonna live?”

  Dirk shrugged.

  Rance said, “What if he dies? What if they blame it on us?”

  Dirk pulled the cigarette from his mouth. “The only ones mighta seen us would be them girls.”

  “What if they talk?”

  “They won’t talk.”

  “How do you know?”

  Dirk shrugged. “Maybe I should see to it. Besides, that tall one, she’s kind’a cute.”

  “Sondra?”

  “Yeah. Maybe I should just pay her a visit. Let her know it would be real smart for her not to have seen us.”

  “What’re you gonna do?” Rance was giving his shark grin. “Smack her around?”

  Dirk shrugged. “I’m gonna let her know I mean business. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

  The boy who had been in the hospital room only seconds before was now sort of hovering in front of them. They could not see him, as he was now part of the darkness just beyond the circle of light from the outdoor lamp mounted above the back door. He could not come any closer, because the light was a little too bright. It’s radiance actually seemed to hurt. And then he realized he could do something about that.

  He expanded himself out to the light, and began blocking it off. First a little at a time, then more.

  “Hey,” Rance said. “Is it getting darker out here?”

  “Naw, man. You’re nuts.”

  The boy continued to block off the light.

  “Hey,” Dirk said. “It is getting darker out here. The wirin’ in this old place is shot. My old man’s always saying it is. Fuses blow all the time.”

  Now it was much darker in the back yard, and the boy realized he could pull himself together, to almost stand on the ground in front of them.

  He wondered if he could speak. He thought he would try. He said, “Don’t touch Sondra.”

  His voice did not sound like his own. Like it used to. It now sounded somehow alien. It was deep, and it had resonance, almost like it filled the night. And Dirk and Rance surely heard him.

  Dirk looked up suddenly. Rance was on his feet. Rance said, “Who said that?”

  The boy said, “The problem with you, Dirk, is you’ll never stop. You’re the kind who will never stop hurting others, until finally someone stops you.”

  “All right,” Dirk said. “Who is this? Where are you? Come on out, or I’ll pound you in the face.”

  The boy said, his newfound baritone seeming to come from all around them, “I’m someone who is going to stop you.”

  “I don’t know who you are, dickwad, but you can’t stop me unless you stop hiding and come out.”

  The boy was standing right in front of them, but they couldn’t see him. How cool, he thought.

  The boy reached out to Dirk. He reached inside of Dirk. He didn’t know how he knew he could do this, but he did it. He reached into Dirk’s mind. And he brought darkness down onto Dirk.

  Dirk’s eyes suddenly opened wide, and the breath caught in his chest. His cigarette fell to the ground.

  “Dirk,” Rance said. “What’s wrong?”

  The boy simply increased the darkness. Turning it up a notch, then another. Darker, and then even more dark. There was no limit. Well, yes, there probably was. Some sort of absolute darkness. He didn’t know if he could reach that far, but he found he didn’t have to.

  Dirk screamed, but only in his mind. Only the boy could hear it. Rance sat, staring at his friend.

  “Dirk, are you all right? Dirk?”

  Dirk’s eyes were wide open, and he was staring but not seeing. A little strand of spittle leaked from his mouth. He began to fall sideways, and then rolled onto the ground. He was breathing and his heart was beating, but that was about all. His mind had gone completely empty.

  “Rance,” the boy in the darkness said, with his newfound baritone. “You are to hurt no one ever again, or you’re next. Do you understand?”

  Rance merely nodded. And he peed himself.

  The boy said, “Now, run.”
>
  Rance ran, as fast as he could.

  The boy in the darkness then wondered about Sondra. He knew where she lived, because he had followed her home once. He supposed it could be considered stalking, but when you are an outcast, when you are forever on the outside looking in, sometimes a little harmless stalking is all you have.

  As quickly as he could think about it, he was at her house. Her bedroom window was open, and he was there, in her room.

  She was lying on the bed, a phone to her ear. She looked beautiful, like she always did. Her hair was in a pony tail. Her front teeth weren’t quite even, but he didn’t care. All he could see when he looked at her was the living incarnation of beauty.

  She was in jeans and a t-shirt, and was saying into the phone, “Yeah, like, really. Y’know?”

  She paused, while the girl on the other end talked. The boy in the darkness knew it was a girl because he could bring himself close enough to the receiver to hear her voice. He could almost feel the gentle touch of Sondra’s skin.

  “Yeah, so, like what’re you gonna do?” Sondra said. “I mean, if he asks you out, or something?”

  The girl on the other end talked.

  Sondra giggled. “No kidding. Really?”

  The boy in the darkness could hear the girl on the other end say, “I don’t think he will, though.”

  “Well, you never know. I see the way he looks at you.” Sondra then glanced about the room. “Weird, it’s, like, getting dark in here, or something.”

  The boy knew he would never be with Sondra. He would never hold her hand. She would never look longingly into his eyes. Even before he had been hit by the car, before he became whatever it was he was now becoming, she had looked at him like he wasn’t even there. He found that, despite whatever it was that was happening to him, this hadn’t changed.