EXODUS

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 10
Prey No More
 

Halley led Wyatt by his paw-like hand, pulling him along a corridor that he’d never been down before, the young woman pausing at intersections to see if there were guards or other personnel about. They’ been skulking along for almost ten minutes, she stepping down as lightly as possible on the outer edges of her sneakers to reduce noise while he padded along on bare feet as the slippers they’d all worn upon first waking up no longer fit their modified feet. Wyatt was actually more than happy to eschew footwear anyway, most of the time that he’d spent on his boat or on the beach having been without shoes. The girl finally stopped at a door and opened it, pulling the savannah cat inside.

The room was rather bare, though there were self-adhesive framed pictures on the concrete walls. Most were of the young woman with different animals, though there were a couple with her and three people that could only be her parents and another that was obviously her sister, the man with light blond hair, the woman with hair as pale as Halley’s was. There were also a number of books, mostly well used paperbacks though they only ranged between romance novels with tawdry covers to science fiction stories, a few that Wyatt had even read. There was a bunk that was substantially higher quality than what the prisoners of Group 1 used and a thick yarned, knitted throw blanket in different earth tones along with a stuffed toy that looked extremely old and was so patched that he couldn’t even tell what it had been in its previous incarnation. The sound of her sneaker sole scuffing the flooring caused Wyatt to turn around only to find the technician just inches away from him.

“Halley? What’s this abou-” he began before the feel of her mouth on his and her arms slipping around his chest silenced him. It took a moment for the embrace and kiss to register and he took her with a gentle firmness by her upper arms and pried her away. “What are you doing?” Wyatt asked with alarm. “Have you lost your mind?!?”

The young woman gave him a heated look. “We’re fine, Wyatt,” she said with a warm smile. “This is my room and no one saw us come in here.” As if to demonstrate her point, she closed the distance between them again and nestled her entire body against his. Considering the time that he and the others had spent at the facility, not to mention the duration of his incarceration before being given over to Lesko, the physical needs and desires that had been ignored for so long provided Halley with precisely the reaction she’d been hoping for. “And don’t tell me that you don’t want the same thing I do. You might say no, but your body, according to my very thorough medical knowledge, is definitely saying YES.” Her small, tapered fingers found the simple belt to his modified jumper and began to unknot it slowly.

“Halley, if we’re caught Lesko will have both of us killed!” Wyatt told her in horror. His fear stemmed not only from the fact that he knew Lesko could, and would, use this against both of them, but also his growing attraction and emotions to the elfin girl and his body’s betrayal of his self control. His eyes fluttered as she ran her fingers through the fur of his chest, that simple contact from another almost pushing him over the brink. Wyatt gulped air for several breaths before again pushing the woman away and stepping back himself though the tension flowed between them like static electricity. “Halley…I…I can’t! I…I’m not even human anymore!” He felt anger and a sort of lurching pain in his chest because he wanted to give in. He wanted…needed this girl like he’d wanted no other in his life and that realization frightened him almost as much as the thought of what Lesko would do if she found out about this.

Halley looked at him with determination in her very warm blue-green eyes. “Wyatt, I told you it doesn’t matter what you look like. I started feeling this way before you were transformed into…into a furry man. You might look like a cat, but to me you’re still a man. And a good one at that!” Halley moved closer again, her advance driving the savannah cat hybrid back against the edge of her metal framed bed. “You know, there are times I wonder why we couldn’t have met before all of this, before you did what you did to wind up in prison. Before being sent here. If we had, I know I’d have fallen in love with you then, too.

“You’re smart, compassionate and kind…if you weren’t you wouldn’t have done for your mother and those others what you did. I know. I watched my parents die. Both of them, and it was just a few months before Professor McEwen released his process. We wouldn’t have been able to afford it, but at least it might have been an option. You did what I should’ve have been able to do for my mom and dad.

“I didn’t, though, because I was a coward. I tried to tell myself they’d get better, but they didn’t. I was only sixteen when my daddy died. Seventeen when mom followed. If I could I would have sold myself to save them. That’s why I got into genetics. Maybe I could learn and do something like Oliver McEwen did so no one else will have to know the kind of pain that we did.”

The girl lowered her head and sniffled a little before waving her hands dismissively.

“That doesn’t matter right now. What matters is right now, this moment. What matters is that you’re here, I’m here and I’m in love with you because you’re a damn decent guy, even if you do look like a cat and I had to come all the way out here to find you. I’m seeing the guy inside. I’m seeing the person and that’s who I want to be with. It’s all I can give you to say I’m sorry for being part of everything that been done to you, Wyatt.”

Halley’s eyes glittered in the relatively dim light of her private quarters but she wouldn’t let the tears fall, not this time. She wanted to be happy, even if it was just a few moments, and she wanted to share that with the man before her. She wished the time and place were different, but had to go with what there was to work with. Halley’s eyes didn’t stray from Wyatt’s as she slipped her sneakers off and stepped closer in her socks. This time when she reached for his modified jumper the hybrid didn’t stop her and as her fingers again riffled through his fur she could feel the trembling that shook his whole body. He didn’t protest as she slipped the top portion of his garment off his shoulders and arms then slid it further down, eventually exposing him to her appreciative and lingering gaze.

It was hard for the girl to keep from squealing in joy as Wyatt finally moved to help her out of her grey trimmed green scrubs, happy that she’d packed along some of her more appealing underwear for this assignment so she could wear them for him. Halley let him get a good look at her in her matching bra and panties that were colored a royal blue with just the right amount of lace to accent her femininity. As his eyes drank in the sight of her, Halley returned the scrutiny, her breath coming deeper and faster as the anticipation built. She wished she could tell him that she found him just as physically appealing now as when he’d been fully human. She’d been telling the truth when she’d told Wyatt that it was the person inside that drew her to him. When they moved together again she shivered at the feel of Wyatt’s fur teasing her flushed skin, accentuating the delicious warmth that filled her entire being. By far, though, the best feeling was the strength and solidity of his arms as the encircled her waist and shoulders. It felt as if Wyatt had been made especially to hold her, like they were two parts of a mould that were pressed together and meant to go that way. Halley reveled in the scent that was almost undetectable until her nose was just an inch away from his body. It was a good smell that reminded her of summer and being in the woods and things that she recalled from far happier days, and all of that was seasoned with his own personal touch that was reminiscent of cinnamon.

“Please, Wyatt,” she whispered, her breath stirring the silken strands of fur on his chest as Halley tried to meld herself against the cat man. “Lay me on the bed and make me as happy as I want to make you…”

When he scooped her up, the action so effortless seeming, Halley thought her heart was going to leap out of her chest in sheer joy. 

*** 

“Well, this is certainly interesting,” Andre Bolivar observed urbanely as the live video feed from a concealed camera showed of one of the human/animal hybrid test subjects and his liaison with one of the technicians he’d assigned to Emily Lesko’s project rolled around with barely contained passion. “It seems as if certain…drives are enhanced for your creations, Doctor.”

The geneticist nodded, hiding the anger at what she felt was a betrayal by one of her own staff. “That might make it easier to ensure the product is self replicating. It would certainly be far more cost efficient if they could breed their own replacements.” Despite the anger, ideas for a new series of experiments were beginning to germinate in the woman’s mind. Would the different species that she was creating be forced to mate with specific opposites of their genus, or would there be a common fertility base across the spectrum. Granted, none of the four types would be able to mate outside of that particular group, but there might be potential for cross fertilization across boundaries that wouldn’t otherwise occur in nature. Of course, she was also curious, though highly doubtful that one of her hybrids could impregnate a human female, though it might be a possibility with their shared human DNA. The problem was they still didn’t know enough. The woman frowned as she continued watching the two unlikely lovers. “I’ll have them detained and separated,” Lesko began.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Andre countered sharply. “I would like to see how this plays out. It will, in the long run, give you a certain amount of leverage against these two.” He leaned forward, his fingers stroking his chin as his brows knitted together. “It certainly seems as if your little pets have the most impressive stamina, don’t they? I doubt that so called professional actors for certain movies could match this performance.” Bolivar smirked contemptuously. “Perhaps breeding privileges could be used as a way of keeping them compliant. History shows that sex, or the promise of, has certainly been used to set in motion grander machinations than what we have planned for your hybrids, Doctor.”

Emily only grunted in response, tired of watching the mismatched lovers in the throes of tender abandon. “If you say so, Andre,” she replied.

“I do say so. You will send news of anymore such pairings. I’m interested in how this will affect their psychological wellbeing. Also, select a few of the less impressive examples out of the four groups that you have and begin the disease resistance testing. Also, I want to know if they can become active vectors for certain ailments, if they’re affected by those viruses and bacteria, or if they turn out to be passive carriers.”

Andre shut off the video feed and turned back to Lesko, his smile once again all charm and suave European urbanity.

“Now, tell me about the good Senator Bingham’s tests that he’d like to initiate. I’m fairly sure that I already know the outcome, but it’ll be quite the spectacle to witness regardless.” 

*** 

Halley assured Wyatt that she’d have no problem in getting him back into the Group 1 chamber after both had showered in her private stall and redressed. Fortunately she was able to refrain from the little displays of affection that might have otherwise caused alarm in the mercenary guards that watched both of them as they circled around the labyrinthine bunker complex so that the reappearance seemed to come from the laboratory section. This was aided by one of the other technicians that Halley was good friends with, a Debbie Colburn who was more than a little enamored of one of her own charges in a different group.

When one of the Janissaries questioned Halley about why a test subject was so late at being returned to the holding chamber, the young woman straightened and promptly told the PMC operative that it was none of his damn business in an imperious tone and to admit Wyatt immediately to the chamber he was assigned to. At the glassteel partition that secured the circular room from the rest of the facility slid open, Halley managed to caress the small of the anthrocat’s back with a whispered ‘I love you,’ that she was sure Wyatt heard, but not the guards. In reply, Wyatt let his tail trail along the young woman’s leg as he stepped inside, afraid to do more than that even though he direly wished to.

It was still before lights out, some of the others still in the process of finishing their ration packets. Because the one time he’d eaten the same food as the rest of the facility personnel and the guilt that had come with it, Wyatt refused Halley’s offers of something from the mess hall and asked for the same thing that the rest of Group 1 was getting. His lover had looked at him in confusion until he told her that it wasn’t right that he should get better food along with the attentions and affections of a very pretty young woman while his cellmates went without. The admission had gotten him yet another tender hug as Halley smiled beatifically. “See?” she crooned. “You really are a good man!”

Ramad was in his cell praying, despite everything that had transpired, the snow leopard’s faith was unshakable, something that Wyatt truly admired and was a little envious of. Pinkerton was on his bunk asleep, as was Perry who snored lightly as he curled up around his blanket, and the others were scattered about, either talking quietly or lost in their own thoughts. Oddly enough, as soon as he entered the chamber, Wyatt felt a certain level of calm fill him as part of him recognized the scents of the others that had endured everything along with him. It wasn’t quite the smell that he might associate with home, but it did comfort him that there were others like him in the same chamber.

He went to his cell, laying back on his bunk as he replayed the events of the day in his mind. He found that there was quite a bit that he could recall rather easily, most of it associated with his five senses that were much more acute than they’d been when he’d been human. Halley was beautiful, of that there was no denying. Even the hardened mercs watched her appreciatively when she walked by. As Wyatt recline on his bunk he thought back to how warm, soft and smooth her skin had felt under the pads of his paws and the way her heat seeped through his fur in a way that was almost magical. The sound of her whispers, her sounds of passion still rolled delightfully in his ears, the taste of her kisses were still on his tongue. By far, though, he recalled her smell, how her soap and shampoo tickled his olfactory senses and accentuated her true scent. It all rolled together to equal a woman that gave him something he hadn’t had since the needle had been placed in his arm during his mock execution.

Halley gave him hope.

Images and feelings carried Wyatt to a place that was far away from the bunker facility until something new intruded on his thoughts and brought him up out of his reverie. Turning his head he saw Julie Valance standing in the doorway to his cell, her paw-like hand gripping the frame that the glassteel door would latch into. Her pupils were large and dilated, giving her eyes a sort of innocence that she hadn’t been able to exude when she’d been a human woman. Beneath that façade there was hurt, as if she’d been betrayed.

“Wanna tell me that you’re not doing the dirty with Halley now?” she whispered, her voice quavering slightly as her yellow and brown flecked eyes brightened with the emotions that tore through her.

Wyatt sat up and locked gazes with the other savannah cat, already tired of fighting with the female. “I’m not going to lie to you, Jules. You know I did.”

The cat woman entered his cell, pausing only a moment before sitting down on Wyatt’s bunk. She leaned forward and stared at the floor, her fingers gripping the metal rail so tightly that her claws slid out. “Why?” Julie husked. “Why her and not me?” She sniffed delicately before her expression hardened. “It not like she’s your type. Not anymore. Damn it, Wyatt! We don’t even have a type. All I know is we aren’t human. The only ones that are your type or my type are in this stupid room!”

Her voice never rose past a tremulous whisper, but for all the effect that her words had, she might as well have been screaming at the other savannah cat.

“You know, I never really learned how to talk to a guy,” Julie continued after several moments, her voice thin and brittle. “I mean, I knew how to give a guy what he wanted, to say things that would make him feel good, but I never learned how to just…talk.” She smiled self deprecatingly and shook her head. “I never told you what I got on death row, did I?”

“I always thought you’d tell me if you wanted. I figure it didn’t really matter with what all of us are going through,” Wyatt answered just as softly.

Julie snorted. “I killed a federal drug officer. It was my third major smuggling run. Slag from Mexico to San Diego but it started off a lot smaller and simpler than that. I used to drop small packages for some of the gangbangers in the neighborhood I grew up in. The cops would nail anyone wearing gang colors, but they wouldn’t stop a girl, a street waif. I learned quick that I could get good money running little packets for different dealers. I did that from the time I was twelve until I hit seventeen. It was how I lived.

“When I started to move more product, the money got better the more I could move. When I started to get into the heavy smuggling I used different ways. Flew once. Drove across the border with the dope dissolved in a spare gas tank I had on an SUV, and the third time was by boat. Right at the line between Mexican and US waters I was intercepted by a joint task force of Mexican Federales, US Border Patrol and the Coast Guard. The guy that came on my boat to arrest me just happened to be the guy I was supposed to make the drop to. That’s how they knew where to find me and what boat to look for. He was crooked and sold half the stuff he intercepted on the side. Played both sides. Problem was he’d gotten greedy. If he killed me he could keep my cut of the slag. If I’d made it, the run would’ve given me another two hundred thousand to bank. It was going to be my last run. I had plans on taking the money and opening up a horse ranch outside Sacramento. I always loved horses. Powerful, beautiful. They can run so fast they can outrun all the bad things…”

Wyatt listened, letting the other savannah cat tell her tale at her own pace. There might have been a time where hearing that a young woman like Julie had been a drug smuggler and cop killer would have turned him off.  But that was before the transformation all of them had undergone. Then again, no one had guessed that he himself could have killed the residents of an entire wing of a nursing home.

“I carried a gun, of course. When you do what I did, holding onto product, thousands of dollars in cash, you had to be able to keep it. I might have been one of the ‘bad guys’, but there were worse ones out there. He came in with his own gun out and I knew he was going to shoot me. I could see it in his eyes. If I hadn’t pulled the trigger I’d have been so much cold meat. He was the only one I killed. Two rounds of triple ought steel buck from the Mossberg shotgun I had on the boat. I dropped it as soon as he was down.

“I got tackled by the other cops, cuffed, read my rights. To be honest, if it had just been the cop I’d have gotten fifteen, maybe twenty years in federal prison with eligibility for parole in ten…less with good behavior. What really put the nail in it all was that I had over a ton of raw slag in the hull of the boat. That was just the slag. That’s not counting the packets of Thai heroin that were also crammed into the bow. You know that there’s a weight limit for drug running that if you surpass it you’re supposed to get the death penalty? I found that out the hard way.

“It was good money, but the reason smuggling pays so good is because it’s about the riskiest thing you can do. Russian Roulette with three rounds in a revolver is probably safer with better odds. If it ain’t cops it’s competing smugglers or rival dealers or just some street punk that’s trying to make a big score and get some cred with others on the streets.”

Wyatt listened until she paused and asked a question that was nagging at him. “Jules? You’re smart. I mean, you’ve got some serious grey matter. Why smuggling or getting wrapped up in drugs?”

Julie turned her head to look at the male beside her and it was similar to that moment that seemed a lifetime ago when she looked at him and there wasn’t the perpetual barrier that was her automatic defense mechanism. Past the feline eyes he saw pain, shame and a nakedness that went to the very soul. A single tear formed in each of her eyes, welling along the bottom lid before spilling over and slipping down the fur of her cheeks. “It was either that or let my father pimp me out. He…he already knew that my goodies were worth charging for. Why not make money on it?”

Nausea and anger vied for control of Wyatt and he felt his stomach churn even as his heart hammered with a rage that he hadn’t felt since the night he’d found his mother in a state of soiled sheets and covered in her own filth because the orderlies and nurses couldn’t be bothered to do their jobs. “You can’t be serious,” he breathed.

“Why not? Why can’t I be serious?” Julie began to tremble with her own rage and the burden of knowing that no matter what she would always, somewhere deep inside, be unclean. “That stuff isn’t supposed to happen in this country, is it? Well, I’ll tell you something, Wyatt. That kind of thing shouldn’t happen anywhere to anyone!” She sniffed and rubbed the end of her almost black triangular nose with the fur on her wrist while the other went back to squeezing the metal bunk frame. “My mother left after she got beat in a drunken rage for not having my father’s supper ready when he came home one night. After that it was just me and the old bastard. Then one night he decided that he wanted to get a little. It had been a while for him and he was feeling the itch, you know? Hookers were too expensive, but there I was, a younger looking version of my mother. He figured since he fed me, put a roof over my head and clothes on my back that it was my job to give him other things that he needed.”

She looked up with a grin that was completely humorless.

“Took almost a week before I could really walk again, and not just from it being my first time. He felt he had to thump on me a bit. I think he really got his jollies by hitting, you know? It got him really worked up to beat a twelve year old senseless. There never was a second time. He really liked his drinking, and after he got going it didn’t matter what was put in front of him so long as it was alcoholic.” Julie went back to staring at the concrete floor. “Whiskey was his favorite. He’d start off with beer, but before too long he had to have the hard stuff. I spent the second day after he stole my virginity crushing up a bottle and hiding the ground up shards. When I had enough at just the right size I made sure that he was good and drunk before putting a nice big dose of broken glass and booze next to him. He was so drunk he didn’t even think about it before slamming it back.

“He coughed immediately and blood and little bits of that bottle came flying out…I think it was the quickest I’d ever seen the sonuvabitch get sober. He coughed and wheezed and it caused all that stuff to go down his stomach…his lungs…”

Julie went silent for several moments, her eyes too wide as she remembered. Wyatt stayed silent, giving her his attention but not forcing the other savannah cat to go any faster than she had too.

“He bled a lot as he rolled around on the floor,” she whispered, her rigid posture finally relaxing a little. “I asked him how it felt. I asked if he thought that it felt as bad as what he did to me, if there was enough pain and blood to equal what he took by force. I asked if my betrayal had hurt as much as his had. He was my father. He was supposed to protect me, not rape me. I think it took an hour for all of it to finally kill him, and when he stopped moving I waited for almost two hours before I got the guts to poke him, expecting him to get up and kill me for what I’d done, but he never moved.

“Eventually I got him down into the basement of the row house we lived in. It wasn’t that great a place, you know, but it had a dirt crawlspace. I worked on the hole for almost two days with a metal spoon from the kitchen before it was big enough and dumped him into it with three boxes of laundry detergent sprinkled over him so he wouldn’t smell.

“It wasn’t hard to make it look like he was still alive. No one in that neighborhood really interfered in the business of another. I never went back to school, though. It was bad enough when my parents were alive or around because I’d get teased about my clothes, everything I had being second and third hand at best and had to have the state pay for my lunches. Things like that get you marked as a target real quick. That and school bored me. If I needed to learn something I went to the library. I did need money, though. I had to eat. It was by chance that one of the dealers on our block ran into me one day and asked if I wanted to do him a solid. He’d pay me if I took a packet to an associate of his a few blocks over, but the trick was I couldn’t let anyone know what I had or that I was carrying anything at all.

“It was a little baggie of white powder, so it really wasn’t that hard to hide. I slipped it into my underwear and found the guy I was looking for, got him the stuff. He handed me a hundred dollar bill in return. I’d never seen that much money in my life, Wyatt. I didn’t even know that dollars came in anything more than ones or fives. From then on I had two things that took up all my time and that was either running packages for the dealers or spending time in the library.

“I taught myself how to use computers, boned up on math, English, basic science, history, though the history was more along the lines of criminal knowledge. The more I knew, the better I could carry packages. It was how I lived. A couple of times it went wrong. I got caught by a couple of the rivals for the guy I was carrying, got raped two more times, beaten, robbed. But the money was good. Then, once I was old enough I began running more and more stuff. I began to move lager hauls across state lines, from Mexico.

“I hooked up with other guys a couple of times, though that was more for show or as a way to add a little more protection for a haul. Yeah, one or two I found in a bar and they were fun for a night or two, but that was it.” Julie finally looked up at the other anthrocat next to her and this time the smile was genuine if only half hearted. “I know what to tell a guy to make him feel like he’s the greatest man on the planet, that he’s the best lover in the world, but I don’t know how to talk…to tell someone what I’m feeling, you know? Maybe…maybe if I did I could have told you what I felt and it would have been me.” Tears began again and didn’t stop once they started flowing. “Maybe if I could’ve told you how I felt about you it would have been me with you and not Halley…”

Julie finally gave in to silent, wracking sobs and slumped against the male she sat with, turning her face into his chest as his arm slipped around her shoulders as her fingers clutched at his jumper and furred arm.

“We’re not going to get out of this alive and I can’t tell you that I want you and need you and I’m going to die alone!” she husked into the fur of the other hybrid’s chest. “I’m pretty pathetic, huh?”

Wyatt continued to hold the smaller savannah cat while is opposite paw-like hand stroked the fur at the back of Julie’s neck. “No,” he rasped, still off center with everything she’d confessed. “You aren’t pathetic.”

Without any real warning, the lights went off in the central portion of the chamber but there wasn’t the standard alarm to inform the prisoners that the doors would be closing in five minutes and that everyone had to return to their own cells. “What’s going on now?” Julie asked as she lifted her head but stayed in the circle of the arm around her. She dashed the ravages of crying from the fur of her face and looked at the cell door.

When it didn’t shut, she and Wyatt regarded each other in the gloomy twilight of the night cycle lamps that were left on. “This…this isn’t normal,” Julie whispered.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “Something new is going on and I’m not sure if it’s good or not…”

When the cells still didn’t close, Julie gently took Wyatt’s chin between her thumb and forefinger and turned his head so that he would have to look at her. “I…I guess I’m glad that you’ve got someone, even though it might only be for a little bit. I really am.” She swallowed hard, closed her eyes for moment before opening them and looking at the male that held her. “But can you find it in you to give me tonight? Just for a little bit? No one night stand, no forgetting the other in the morning…I want to know what it’s like to be with someone that actually cares about me for me...” She lifted her head so that there were only scant inches between their noses so that each felt the breath of the other on their feline faces. “Just tonight, Wyatt,” she whispered imploringly.

— NEXT CHAPTER —

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Ted R. Blasingame. All rights reserved.