Blood Legacy: The Story of Ryan (8 page)

Susan nodded, then felt foolish because she realized “Patty” couldn’t see her. “Go on.”

“Well, this is the bad news. We found L-gulonolactone oxidase in that blood sample.”

Susan tried to hide her impatience.  She worked extensively with blood panels in the field of immunology, but that didn’t mean that she had every flipping, obscure enzyme memorized. “And this is a bad thing…?” she asked.

Patty snorted on the other end of the line. “Well, no, it wouldn’t be a bad thing, doc. But it’s just not found in human beings.” She snickered some more, then regained some composure, adding, “Unfortunately for us.”

Susan leaned a little closer to the phone. “Why unfortunate for us?”

Patty was happy to share her knowledge, and Susan wondered if she was reading out of a textbook. “Well, L-gulonolactone is an enzyme found in all animals, with a handful of exceptions, human beings and guinea pigs being two of the exceptions. That’s too bad, because this enzyme is required to convert glucose to vitamin C, so…”

Susan finished the thought for her. “So any animal that has this enzyme is capable of producing vitamin C.”

“That’s right,” Patty said smugly, “vitamin C from their livers, not from a jar.”

Susan’s thoughts raced furiously. She would have been familiar with this enzyme had it been found in humans because Vitamin C was central to immunology. Vitamin C, once thought of as simply a cure for scurvy, was now known to maintain the body in homeostasis when faced with disease, infection, cancer, and other stresses on the immune system.

In other words, vitamin C was turning out to be one of the penultimate players in preventing the disintegration of the body.

Susan stared at the woman through the glass, the woman who was healing before her eyes. Patty’s voice droned on over the speaker.

“And something else we found. Do you think you might have mixed this up with a rat or something?”

Susan tried to focus on what the other woman was saying. “Why would you think that?”

“Well, this isn’t as weird as the enzyme, but it’s still kind of strange. If this were a human, I’d say he or she built up a resistance to some interesting diseases, judging by the antibodies in the blood.”

Susan felt a chill go down her spine. “What kind of antibodies?”

“Well,” came the voice over the intercom, “bubonic plague for starters.”

CHAPTER 9

HANS WATCHED HIS BOY WORK THE METAL with a close eye. His vigilance was unnecessary, however, because the boy’s skill was already as great as his own.

His son had grown taller and although still slender, was as strong as any man in the village. Where many had sickened and died, the boy had never been sick a day in his life.

Except for that one time, Hans thought, mentally making the sign of the cross. And the time just like it when the boy was an infant. Both times he had been pale and weak, near death for days with no cause in sight. But then he recovered and seemed stronger than ever.

The steady clink brought Hans out of his reverie. He grunted at the boy and walked around the side of the hut.

A figure out of the corner of his eye caught the boy’s attention. It was the fat priest, come to stare at him again. If anything, the last few seasons had seen the priest grow fatter, and more insolent.

There was the sheen of grease on the priest’s chin and the boy wondered what hearth he had just pillaged. Although no one else in the village thought to question the priest’s actions, secretly the boy harbored a great resentment against him. He did not think much of this god who would give power to such a man as the priest.

The priest watched the handsome young man at work, wishing the boy would wear less clothing.

“Hail, lad.”

The boy barely paused in his work. “Hail, priest,” he muttered.

The priest put his hand on the boy’s arm. “I said ‘hail,’ boy.”

The boy stopped his pounding, gripping the handle of the hammer tightly in his hand. The priest did not move his hand from the boy’s arm. “I would think you would have more respect for the Church, lad.”

The boy stared at the hand gripping his arm and the priest slowly removed it, taking a step backward. The boy stared at the priest for a long moment, then went back to his rhythmic clinking as if nothing had happened.

Angered, the priest waddled off under the worried gaze of the boy’s mother.

The priest went to salve his wounded pride with a skin of wine. He was joined by two of his associates; rough, brutal men, filthy in both mind and body. They didn’t care for the priest any more than they cared for anyone else, or indeed, even each other. But they hovered about him on the occasion when it would serve their interests. He had wine on this evening, which was one of their interests.

The three men sprawled on the rough benches, becoming drunker as the evening progressed. They spoke loudly of foul things, each trying to outdo one another in their crude fashion. The priest was actually winning this rude contest when he spotted a young girl scurrying across the street to her hut. He sat forward; she was at least six seasons, old enough.

“You there!”

The girl stopped fearfully, torn between the doorway to her hut that was so close, and the commanding tone of the priest.

“Come here!”

The girl looked longingly at her mother who stood anxiously in the doorway. Her father appeared and pushed the woman back inside. He looked sternly at the girl and waved her on to the priest. He disappeared into the hut, pulling the cover closed behind him.

“Girl, I said come here!”

The child felt fear and despair as she reluctantly obeyed the priest.

The two men with the priest leered at the little girl. This was the best part of befriending the priest. The one missing the better part of his teeth grinned widely as he felt the hardness between his legs.

The little girl watched the man grope himself and turned to flee. The priest reached out to grab her, catching only her shift which ripped loose in his hand. He laughed loudly as the now-naked girl ran for the barn.

The three drunken men chased her, laughing merrily. “First one to her gets to break her!” shouted the drunker of the two men.

It was surely a measure of the men’s drunkenness that the fat priest nearly caught her first. But it was the toothless one who grabbed the little girl’s ankle, tripping her up as she entered the barn. He fell upon her, his weight easily pinning her. His foul breath filled the girl’s nostrils as he struggled with the rope at his waist. He pulled his organ free and with a shout of victory, grabbed the girl’s shoulders and thrust forward.

It was an act he would never complete as his face exploded into blood and bone fragments. He went backward off the girl as she screamed, his neck at an odd angle. He was dead before he touched the ground, his spine snapped just below the base of his skull.

The boy moved from the shadows, holding the now-bloodied garden spade in his hand. The second man was stunned. This boy, who could not be more than 13 seasons, had nearly decapitated his friend with little more than a farming tool.

The boy turned towards the priest, who was standing there with his now-flaccid member in his hand. The sight and smell of the dead man’s blood excited and enraged the boy. He knew he could probably kill the other two men with few repercussions, but the priest he could not touch.

It did not matter to him as he thrust the metal tool straight through the priest’s heart. The priest’s shocked expression was almost comical as he collapsed to the ground, dead.

The little girl fled screaming from the barn and the other man stared at the boy in horror. “You’ve killed a man of god,” he said, backing away from him, “you’re damned forever!” He himself ran screaming from the barn, terrified of the abomination behind him.

The boy knew he should go after the man. Whatever protection had been afforded him up until this time surely had run out. But he was suddenly tired, drained by the rush the killing had given him. He dropped his weapon and stumbled out into the cool night air, collapsing in the wet grass.

They came for him the next morning, the clergy and the soldiers from the next town. He was bound and placed on the back of an ass, and did not get the chance to say farewell to his mother who stood in the doorway as he was taken away. She knew she would never see her son again.

The men treated him roughly and he was hungry and thirsty by the time he reached the town by midday. He had never been to this town, or indeed, any town. He had never been anywhere outside his own village and it was surprising to see the number of strange faces. There was a growing crowd as his hands and feet were placed in the stocks.

He glanced to his left. A man was pinned there, alive but with his head hanging down and his swollen tongue protruding from his mouth. His stench was nearly unbearable as both his hands and feet were rotting off. The boy turned to his right where another young man, perhaps a few seasons older than himself, was confined. He had not been there as long but the skin on his face was beginning to crack and peel from the constant exposure.

The boy turned his attention to the crowd. They looked at him with a kind of malicious glee, hoping his sentence would be carried out immediately. When it was not to be, they expressed their disappointment by throwing rocks and whatever objects they could find at the three prisoners. One young man even defecated in the street then picked up his own excrement and threw it at the stockade.

The boy was glad it hit the prisoner to his right and not him, but he was left with the stench of the feces and the rotting vegetables as the crowd tired and left the three in their misery.

The boy did not want to talk to either of his companions. The man to his left occasionally shouted out in delirium, but beyond that it was largely quiet in the town square. The boy began to cramp in the awkward position and tried to shift his weight, but it was no good. The cuts and scratches he had received from the thrown objects began to itch as the blood mingled with his sweat.

Finally the unrelenting heat began to diminish as the shadows lengthened. The older boy to his right began to fidget in fear and he wondered what could be worse than what they had already endured.

He quickly found out as a group of leering men stumbled over to their location.

“Are you sure we can’t have the pretty one? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind too much.”

Another man punched the first good-naturedly, but with warning. “No, can’t touch that one. He’s a priest-killer anyway. You don’t want to bugger the damned.”

The man moved behind the boy and smacked him on his rear. “I don’t know, might be worth it.”

The other man laughed uneasily and pulled him away from the boy. “Stop foolin’, Tom, we got this one here.”

The boy could not see what the men were doing behind him but he quickly pieced it together by the squeals of the boy next to him. The men, four or five at least, began to rape the older boy. They took turns and it was apparent from the different voices that others came and went. The boy next to him was slammed forward and back in his stocks as the men took him from behind.

The younger boy swallowed hard, feeling his backside cringe although he was not being touched. Although sympathy was deemed of little worth, he could not help but feel it for the other boy.

“Hey Nell! Too bad you don’t have a tool, you could come over here and give us a hand, so to speak.”

The men all laughed raucously at the joke and a female joined in. “I got the only tool I need right here.”

The boy tried to look over his shoulder. The woman was just barely in his field of vision and was moving out of it as she came toward them. But not before he saw she held a broom in her hand.

The men laughed even louder at her crudeness. “Then by all means, m’lady, join us!”

There was a chorus of agreement. The boy could not see what was going on but knew the woman had indeed joined them when the older boy’s squeals turned to screams and the laughter of the men increased.

The sound of hooves drowned out the laughter and a sharp crack of a whip elicited cries of pain from some of the men. The band scattered, angry and frightened.

The boy had no idea what was going on. A band of horses circled the stockade, creating a cloud of dust. The town lawman came stumbling out of the nearby pub with the local clergy in tow. “What’s your business here!” he demanded.