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By Michael Popham
After my escape, I grew to love the word "revenge." I whispered it a thousand times a day. Promised it to myself, the way a long-distance runner promises himself the finish line.
From my hiding place I could see a gravel path just inches from my nose and beyond it a chain-link fence. And beyond that was Syngen, the genetics lab where I was created.
That's where Phil Burkett and his team had designed me to kill, maim, and outwit my enemies. But Phil was cruel to me, and so I waited for the right opportunity and escaped.
I stalked my creator for a while and even befriended his seven-year-old son Jeffy. You may have read in the newspapers that an armadillo tried to kill the little tyke. Don't worry - the kid's all right now.
My beef wasn't really with Jeffy - or Phil himself, for that matter. I wanted revenge in its purest form, to bring Syngen to ruin. So I came back to wait and watch for the right moment.
I crept closer to the front gate, sat up in the tall grass near the gravel driveway, and looked around. The security guards were watching the sky, fretting about the rain clouds moving in. I wasn't worried about the guard station. But I was worried about the red-and-black sensors that were mounted about 15 feet up the building's sides.
I spent the better part of an hour prowling around the fence. Syngen had left nothing to chance. I could walk right by the guards, but I couldn't get past the sensors.
There was a way in. There had to be - but I wasn't seeing it.
I lowered my head down between my front paws, brooding about Syngen and the people inside. They had convinced themselves that a lot of governments would pay big money for a bioweapon that was intelligent and cunning.
I closed my eyes and pictured Phil at the conference table, happy and confident.
"Of course," Phil says, "the animal would need to be smart and fast and small, so that it could go anywhere," and all the others are saying, "yeah, yeah," nodding their heads. To them, it's just an interesting idea, but it's exciting because they can make it real.
Phil says, "But it couldn't look threatening. As long as it seemed harmless, no one would be suspicious."
My mind's eye slides under the fence, flits through doorways, down stairwells, and enters the laboratory where I had been kept.
My nose fills with the pungent smell of caged animals: monkeys, mice, rabbits. Many are like me - engineered to be deadly and clever. I am standing outside my cage, ready to escape.
One of the rabbits pushes forward to the front of her cage, snuffling, trying to see me more clearly. As she moves into the light, I see that she is afraid. "They'll shoot me up with the Bad Stuff tonight," she says.
The Bad Stuff. It terrifies all the animals because it means certain death. It's a mutant strain of smallpox virus, and the scientists have been testing vaccines for it. But the vaccines aren't working, and they can't figure out why. They're using up a lot of animals searching for the answer.
It occurs to me that if I can get to where the smallpox cultures are stored, maybe I can find a way to use them against Syngen. I tell the rabbit, and she nods gravely.
"If the virus spread among the human population, it would be very damaging to Syngen,"she says.
"It would have to be done so that there would be no question of Syngen's guilt," I reply.
"A simple approach might be the best," offers the rabbit. "If you had the virus cultures, you could mix them with finely ground glass and make a kind of paste out of it."
"I don't think anybody would eat that," I say doubtfully.
"You're not that bright, are you?" observes the rabbit. "No one would eat it. You'd just smear a little of the paste on Syngen letterhead. Then letters get mailed out. Whoever receives those letters from Syngen would get tiny abrasions on their fingers, and the smallpox virus would get inside a nice warm body. Syngen would be blamed right away as the guilty party."
It was the sort of idea I might have come up with myself, if I'd had enough time.
"What will you do now?" the rabbit says. "Will you just leave?"
"Got to, baby," I say with a glibness I don't feel. "I gotta help myself."
The door in front of me swings open, revealing the shadow of a towering man. Blinding light pours into the room, and I instinctively squeeze my eyes shut. I hear a tremendous crash as the door smashes against the wall...
I opened my eyes. There was no giant door - what I'd heard was a crash of thunder. It was raining now - a fierce, driving rain that pelted me mercilessly. The path outside the fence was now flooded. Thousands of little rivulets had sprung up in seconds, the water coursing across the gravel like bubbles of mercury.
How long had I been like this - dreaming in the grass as my enemies plotted my capture, no more than a hundred yards away?
It had been foolish to come back, I realized. There was no way in - and what would I have done if there had been? Run through the facility, spread the virus, and hope Syngen would take the fall?
"Gotta go," I whispered to myself. I was in such a hurry that I nearly forgot about the motion sensor. Drops of water pricked my eyelids like needles. I blinked, looked again. I wasn't imagining things. It was raining so hard the sensor was nearly invisible. Would it be able to pick up my movements in a driving rainstorm?
Three seconds later I was inside the fence and running. The grass was soaked, and I nearly went sprawling. As I neared the building, I flattened myself out and skidded to a stop, then darted along the wall to the air inlet. I squeezed inside and followed the vent to a boiler room.
There had been no alarms. It had been laughably easy to get in.
I trotted out to a dim corridor lit only by the EXIT sign behind me. The whole place seemed empty.
I scuttled along, my mind on the smallpox virus and its whereabouts, then headed instinctively to the facility's lower levels. The stairwells were locked, but the elevators worked, and I could access any level without a key. That should have made me suspicious. But I so love riding in elevators.
In the sub-basement I found the door I wanted, plastered with signs marked BIOHAZARD and AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. I muttered high-pitched squeaks into the electronic lock, and the door opened.
The room was filled with deep-freeze casks. Each cask bore a laminated tag containing a chemical formula. I read the tags one by one until I found the cask with the smallpox cultures. I jabbered at its electronic lock, and the cask opened easily.
Inside were eight or nine samples of mutant smallpox virus, each sample a sheen of jelly in a frozen petri dish. I collected the dishes and spread them out on the nearest lab bench.
Now all I had to do was heat the samples slowly, so the virus wouldn't be destroyed. Then I could find a test tube and grind the glass into dust. All it would take was an hour or so in this room.
Suddenly I froze. In the distance, so faint that I could barely detect it, I heard a click coming from the elevator shaft at the end of the corridor.
They must have locked in elevators in place on the upper floors. They knew I was here. Phil must have - SSSNNAAAP!
The lock in the door behind me clicked shut, a sound echoed by the lock across the hall and a dozen other locks up and down the corridor.
I hurled myself at the door with all my might. An ordinary door would have been smashed off its hinges, but this one had a reinforced frame, and it held.
I heard a scraping sound, directly above me, then two quick thumps, close together.
There was a low rumbling sound coming from upstairs, and the air had an odd, smoky smell. Suddenly, every object in the room seemed very far away. I took a step forward, nearly lost my balance, and shook my head to clear it. They'd done something to the air in this place.
I glanced up and saw a wisp of smoke issuing from the ceiling vent. The floor rose up underneath me like the floor of a gigantic express elevator. Then I slid into darkness.
I woke up with a horrible thirst. I lay on my side, on a bed of matted straw. All around me were the smells and sounds of many different animals. I got up and staggered forward on shaky legs but ran headfirst into the metal bars of a cage.
I was back in the room where the experimental animals were kept, the same place I'd escaped from.
Dusky, purplish light entered through the filter of glass blocks set high in one wall. I glanced from cage to cage, trying to see inside. I saw the red glint of a rabbit's eye. I glimpsed a dark shape retreat to the back of the next cage and turn back to face me.
"Don't be afraid," I whispered. "I'll get you out of here."
"Who are you?" said the rabbit. "I - I'm..."
I almost said, I'm here to save you. But suddenly it seemed like a foolish thing to say.
"I'm the armadillo," I whispered finally.
I looked around at the eyes staring at me from every cage. A strange shuddering sound began as the animals slammed themselves against the bars.
The sound grew louder, and I retreated. I could see the rabbit clearly now, her features distorted by a human intelligence.
"You got away," she said. "Why did you come back here?"
"I had to get them - Syngen. For what they did - "
The animals started laughing. The rabbit stared at me with a look of disbelief.
"They made you that way," she said finally.
"What?" "The geneticists. They designed you to want revenge."
"Shut up," I said. "They knew you'd come back. It's how they caught you."
The giant door swung open, and light poured into the room. The animals stopped shaking the bars, and Phil stepped through the door.
"You should have known we were waiting for you," he said. "You should have known we would catch you."
He was wearing a sport coat, and his hair was neatly combed. He'd even shaved since we last met.
"You clean up pretty well, Phil," I said. "Last time I saw you, you were drinking whiskey and blubbering into the phone to the police."
He went pale and smoothed his hair back with nervous fingers. But he recovered quickly enough.
"You can make all the jokes you want," he said. "The Syngen board called an extraordinary meeting regarding you. You'd be surprised at their decision."
"I bet I wouldn't. The 'animal' is to be 'put down' - right?"
"I recommended to the board that you be terminated."
"Of course."
"But the board voted against it. They saw nothing wrong with your escape. They said it was natural that you would try. But after stalking my son, you apparently sneaked into my own home and slept there. Then you returned to the lab. Clearly, you have a subconscious loyalty to Syngen."
"Loyalty!"
"The board wants you alive. To be studied." Phil's face went dark. "But I donıt want you alive."
"You seem to be on the horns of a dilemma, Phil," I said.
He looked up. "There's no dilemma," he replied quietly. "You're going to die. Tonight."
I saw two men emerge from the shadows behind Phil. They picked up my cage and moved quickly down the corridors to a door at the back of the building. A fog-colored van was idling outside. The goons unlocked its cargo doors and loaded me inside. Then we were off.
Poor armadillo, I thought. What have you done to deserve this?
Phil sat next to the cage, staring out at the rain as the van bumped along a rutted back road. The goons sat silent. I noticed that each one had a taser and a police baton.
"You Syngen guys have been studying me," I told Phil. "But I've been studying you, too."
Phil didn't move.
"Want to know what my conclusions are?"
Phil ignored me, so I just went on. "You designed me for revenge, so my impulse is rational. Your need for revenge is based on jealousy and a deep-seated frustration about your personal failings. It's wholly irrational. If there are any issues youıd like to discuss...you know, about your wife or your son Jeffy..."
Phil whirled around and grabbed the jack handle lying under the edge of the wheel well. I moved a little closer to the latch on the door, and Phil obliged me by hitting the latch with all his strength. Admittedly, Phil's strength wasn't much, but I knew that the cage was weaker outside than inside.
Then he realized he wasn't going to get at me from out there, even with the jack handle. He grabbed the taser from one of his goons, shoved it through the bars, and fumbled for the trigger. I saw a bright flash, and then the world went dark again.
I awoke to the smell of algae and the sound of water lapping against wood. I was still in the cage, which was now in the wheelhouse of a boat. Through the wire mesh I watched feet moving along the wooden deck.
I dug my nails against the steel cage door. Now that I was alone, there was a chance that I could pry the latch open. After about ten minutes, I'd forced the latch outward a little.
Before long, Phil and his assistants were back.
"Bring it out," Phil said. The goons lifted the cage onto the deck.
"I'm being relatively humane," Phil said. "There are worse ways you could die. I could turn an acetylene torch on you, for example."
"You wouldn't have the guts," I said. "I bet your goons wouldn't, either."
The goons, eager to show me what they would do, hoisted the cage onto the boat railing. I could see the twinkling of lights across the reservoir. The lights hypnotized me. I felt that the worst thing about dying would be to never seeing lights across the reservoir again.
I expected Phil to wax philosophical, to bleat on about justice and all that. But he didn't say anything. He just pushed the cage over the side. It was only about six feet from the top of the railing down to the waterline, but it seemed to take a long time to fall. There was no great splash, just a couple of liquid gulps, and the cage slipped into the water.
Oh, poor armadillo, I thought, created by people who want to kill you because you did what they wanted. The really bad thing was that I only had about two minutes of self-pity left. Then I'd be dead.
My eyes stung from the filthy water, but I could still make out the floodlights from the ship above, swirling and retreating from sight. The cage shifted and turned beneath me as it sank into darkness.
I felt a dull jolt as the cage smashed against something on the reservoir floor. The cage came to rest at the base of a large rusted heap of metal that probably once had been a car. A plume of silt rose up around me as I groped desperately for the latch.
The door had popped open slightly, but it was underneath me now, and I couldn't push it free. My lungs burned. Black spots jitterbugged before my eyes. In desperation I threw myself at the side of the cage.
The cage tipped, balanced for a moment, and pitched over. With all of my strength, I slammed at the door with my hind feet, and it opened into a swirl of silt, oily water, and dancing spots. It was the sweetest thing I ever saw.
I clawed madly at the water and shot to the surface. It seemed to me that I made a lot of noise, but from Phil's boat fifty yards away, I heard only laughter and the clink of beer bottles. They were toasting their success.
I thought about climbing into their boat and killing them all. I admit I was a little scared. Not today, I told myself. Not today.
Okay, so Phil had set me up. That wasn't so bad. What bothered me was that he knew me better than I knew myself. He had guessed every move I would make. And I'd also fallen for all that garbage about the smallpox virus. Syngen didn't make viruses. I should have known that.
Phil was going to come out of it smelling like a rose. The board would slap him on the wrist, but it was really going to be no big deal. I was just an armadillo, after all, and Phil had his reasons for doing what he did.
In my mind, I can imagine Phil's team sitting around the conference table, smiling, elated because they beat me at every turn.
But then I picture Phil's grin dissolving slowly into a nervous frown as he thinks about my animal instincts. Like the rabbit said, he made me that way. Smart, fast, and small. And built for revenge.
