Seed

by Michael Edelson

  When he made it to the beach, he ran up to Max and handed him a flashlight.

  “Do you know Morse code?” Alex asked, proud to be breathing normally despite having run quite a distance. A silly thing to feel, but he liked anything that distinguished him from the others, especially Max.

  The older man hesitated, examining the light. “Um, no, I don’t.”

  “SOS,” Alex said patiently. “Three dots, three dashes, three dots. Very simple.”

  “How…”

  “The tail cap of the flashlight has a button. Don’t point these things at anyone, they are very powerful and will blind someone for a little while, especially if their eyes are adjusted to the dark. Tap the button for a dot, hold it down for a second for a dash. Got it?”

  Max hesitated, considering it, then nodded. “I believe so.” He pointed the light towards the ships and hit the button briefly. A powerful beam lanced into the night.

  “Holy crap!” someone in the crowd said. “That’s the brightest flashlight I’ve ever seen!”

  “Good,” Alex said. “Three dots, three dashes, three dots. Got it?”

  Max nodded, and Alex handed him the two remaining flashlights.

  “Give these to people with more than two brain cells to rub together. Have them spread out along the beach and flash that signal at those ships. Aim carefully for maximum effectiveness.”

  “Will do. What about you?”

  “I’m going away from the lights and the fire, and see what I can see with these.” He held up the plastic NVD box. Max looked perplexed.

  “Night vision,” Alex explained.

  “Ah.”

  Alex turned and ran towards the patch of jungle he had napped in, then looked back towards the others. He didn’t see any lights. Max must still be passing along his instructions. Deciding to play it safe, he crossed over to the barrier side of the trees. That was still quite a way from the nausea effect.

  Kneeling in the sand, he opened the NVD box and took out a binocular optic with variable magnification mounted on a head harness. Before strapping it on, he examined the device to locate its controls. Once it was on his head, he moved it into position over his eyes and turned it on.

  “Wow,” he said, instantly impressed by the clarity with which he saw his surroundings. He had thought the goggles he used in Ft. Irwin were the latest and greatest, but these were noticeably superior. They seemed to use a combination of light amplification and thermal imaging technology. Scanning the horizon, he quickly located the ship lights and adjusted the magnification to six, the maximum setting. It was hard to keep the ships in his field of view, but he quickly learned to steady his head and was able to make out the blurry shapes of cargo ships behind the glaring torches of their marker lights.

  After staring at the ships for a while, he realized they were moving towards each other, or perhaps passing one another. Suddenly bright pulses of light glowed at the periphery of his vision as Max and the others began to signal with their flashlights. Counting the dots and dashes, he was relieved to find that they weren’t bungling the code.

  He turned the goggles off, removed them from his head and put them back in the plastic case. He was about to start signaling the ships with his weapon light when he heard something to his right, from the direction of the barrier. It sounded almost like a whimper.

  As odd as it was for a soldier to be afraid of the dark, Alex had always had an irrational fear of the night, or more accurately of being alone outside at night. He had gotten used to dealing with it, and having a weapon made it easier. He left the box on the sand, drew his sidearm and held it ready. It had a tiny little optic mounted in a cutout on the rear of the slide. The red dot was just bright enough to see clearly. There was also a weapon light mounted under the slide just forward of the trigger guard. The slide had slots cut into it to reduce weight and the barrel and chamber were coated in a gold colored low friction coating. All of the gear his abductors had given him was very high end stuff.

  Scanning the beach as he walked towards the sound, he was able to make out the silhouette of a person almost immediately, and as he got closer, he saw that it was a woman. She was standing at what he assumed was the edge of the barrier effect, looking across to the other side.

  Relaxing, he lowered the pistol and approached less stealthily. The closer he got, the better he could see her. She jumped, inhaling sharply, and spun to face him.

  “You!” she cried, and Alex recognized her immediately. It was Yael. A louder whimper accompanied the sound of her voice, and at this range Alex was able to determine that it was coming from the other side of the barrier.

  Chapter 6

  “Why did you sneak up on me?” Yael demanded. Her eyes widened as she saw his pistol, or more accurately how he was holding it. She took a step back. “Don’t!”

  “Don’t what?” Alex asked, perplexed by her reaction. He holstered the pistol and stood staring at her with a raised eyebrow.

  She paused, considering the situation. “Never mind. I thought…never mind.”

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked, looking around. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “You don’t give anything up easily, do you?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She put her hands on her hips and took a slight step forward. If she were a man, he would have prepared himself for a fight.

  “Why can’t you just give me a break?” he asked, suddenly overcome with frustration and anger, though he had no idea where it was coming from. “I’ve tried to be nice to you since we met, and all you do is give me shit!”

  She opened her mouth, an angry retort chambered and ready to fire, but then stopped herself, looking at him with uncertainty. After a moment, she crossed her arms in front of her chest and seemed to relax.

  “Fine, I’m sorry,” she said, looking away. “I’m just… being here, I…”

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry too.” He felt bad about yelling at her, for all he knew this was her first time away from home, like poor Private Haag. “What are you doing out here alone, though? It’s not safe.” He wondered what Haag was doing at the moment, and whether they’d managed to save his hand. He hoped the kid was okay.

  She turned back towards the field and pointed. “Look.”

  He followed her finger and tried to see what she was looking at and caught a hint of movement, though he couldn’t quite make out what it was. He drew his pistol and pointed it at the source.

  “No!” she shouted, making a grab for the gun. “Don’t shoot it! It’s just a dog!”

  “Relax,” he said, jerking the weapon away before she could get it. “I’m not going to shoot it. What kind of an asshole do you think I am?” He activated the weapon light and saw the dog in the stark white beam, tail wagging, eyes glowing, about fifty meters away. It was a small dog, mostly white, though with some black patches. Probably a mutt. It paced back and forth along the edge of the nausea field, whimpering. So that’s how wide the barrier was: fifty meters.

  “Awww,” Yael cooed, seeing it clearly in the light. “I wish we could get to it. Poor thing.”

  “I’ll try, if you want,” Alex said. “I might be able to meet it close enough in the middle for me to grab it, if it can get as far as I can.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “It’s too dangerous. There were some dead animals in the jungle, caught in this thing, where it circles the village. They looked like they puked their guts out. It was horrible.”

  “I tried it earlier. I made it almost halfway. I didn’t realize that before, but now that I see where the dog is…that’s my puke there. See it?”

  “You could have died!” she cried. “What were you thinking?”

  He shrugged. “Do you want me to try or not?”

  She thought about it, then shook her head. “I can’t ask you to.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Hold this.” He held his pistol out to her, grip first
.

  She took a step back. “You would trust me with it?” She looked at him with a peculiar expression.

  He smiled. “Promise not to shoot me, okay?” He had meant it as a joke, but she took it seriously.

  “I promise,” she said as she stepped back towards him.

  “The switch to turn the light on and off is right in front of the trigger guard. Keep it pointed at the dog, and keep your finger off the trigger.” He handed her the pistol, then turned towards the dog. The light went out for a couple of seconds and then came back on, guiding his way. The dog, seeing him move towards it, yapped and started to move closer, but then stopped and whined again.

  “Here boy!” Alex called out. “Come here! Good dog! Good dog!” As he got closer to the animal he started to feel sick, just like before. It was mild at first, but each step made it worse.

  “Here boy!” he shouted, trying to keep the pain from his voice. “Good dog! Come here!” When he was twenty meters in, a bit more than a third of the way to the dog, he paused, momentarily overcome by a terrible wave of nausea he could barely contain. If there was a worse feeling in the world, he didn’t know what it was. Why was he doing this? For the dog, or for her?

  “Please boy,” he cried out. “Please come here!” His voice cracked, and he had to take several deep breaths to avoid vomiting. A few steps later, he couldn’t contain it, and puked into the sand at his feet, managing to turn his head in time to avoid soiling himself. The dog started barking, then took a tentative step forward, then another, and suddenly bolted towards him. It ran most of the way to him, then started to yelp loudly and run in circles, gagging and coughing.

  Alex looked up at the sky and inhaled deeply, trying to forget where he was. He was angry. Angry at the dog, angry at himself for being so stupid as to walk into this deathtrap again, and angry at Yael for being pretty.

  “Fuck this shit,” he said. Without looking down, he started to run towards the dog. The feeling of intensifying nausea became unbearable, a solid wall that he couldn’t push through. He looked down and saw the dog just a few feet away, lying on its side, its whole body convulsing like a grotesque snake trying to swallow something too large for its throat.

  No longer able to stand, he collapsed to his knees and clutched his stomach, whimpering from the pain. He would have screamed, but he couldn’t suck in enough air.

  “Alex!” Yael shouted, running towards him.

  “Stay back!” he cried as loud as he could, hoping she would hear him. She did. He thought about going back, but he couldn’t stand seeing the dog that way. The expression “a dog’s death” didn’t do this experience justice. He dropped down and pushed forward on hands and knees, clenching his stomach to stave off what little of the convulsions he could. It helped a little bit, but every foot he moved forward was another notch on the pain scale until he was sure it would drive him mad. The dog saw him and rolled onto its belly, crawling towards him feebly. Just as he thought he would pass out, it came within reach. Grabbing it by the scruff of its neck, he found some reserve of strength he wouldn’t have imagined he had and got to his feet. He half leapt and half ran out of the field, unable to contain the foamy bile that spewed out of his mouth and all over his shirt. Yael ran to him, grabbed his arm and pulled him forward.

  When he was out of the field he dropped the dog, collapsed onto his back, and tried his best not to pass out.

  “I will never fucking do that again!” he managed between gasps. “Holy fuck that was the worst thing I’ve ever felt in my life!” The dog didn’t look much better. It lay on its side, panting, its brown eyes fixed on Alex, tail twitching slightly.

  “You did it!” Yael cried excitedly. “I can’t believe you did it! That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen!” She held the pistol by the slide in her left hand, casually and expertly. Perhaps she had handled a similar weapon in one of those Israeli kids’ camps where they live in the desert, plant crops and learn to shoot. That would explain a lot about her.

  He looked up at her, and despite the persistent pain in his throat, stomach and head, he smiled.

  “Did you just say something nice to me?” he croaked.

  She smiled back. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Oh shut up. Are you okay? You look like crap!”

  “Yeah,” he said, and his smile turned into a grin. “You were worried about me. I saw you run towards me.”

  “I was worried about the dog.”

  “The dog’s name is Alex?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t want you to die, at least not then. I didn’t want to have to feel guilty.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  The dog rolled onto its belly and inched over to him. It sniffed the air next to his head, then moved closer and licked his face.

  “It likes you!” Yael said.

  Sitting up, Alex picked up the dog and put it on his lap, stroking it gently. In the process, he noticed it was female.

  “Yes she does. Now let’s see what we can see. Shine that light over here, will you? But not right at me.” Yael pointed the pistol at the dog. It was blindingly bright, but his eyes adjusted quickly. It was adjusting back that would be the problem.

  He searched the dog’s neck and found a collar with two tags, a plastic one shaped like a bone and a portion of a metal one. The metal tag, red or purple aluminum, looked like it had been broken off near the base where it attached to the collar. He could only see the tops of letters—it was impossible to know what it may have said. The plastic tag was in once piece, but there was nothing on it. It’s surface was rough, as though someone sanded off the dog’s name and whatever goofy picture this type of tag usually came with.

  “That’s odd,” he said. “It looks like someone went out of their way to make sure we couldn’t get anything off of these.”

  “Let me see,” she said, leaning forward. “That is odd.” She reached for the tags, and the dog sniffed her and licked her hand.

  “She likes you too,” Alex said. “Imagine that. Dogs must be able to sense something people can’t.”

  Yael pulled back, and the light died. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew he had gone too far and hurt her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean that, I was just teasing.”

  “Fine,” she said tersely. Then, after a moment of silence, added, “What are you going to do with it?”

  “The dog?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you mean what are we going to do with it?”

  She shrugged. “You went and got it. Are you going to keep it?”

  “We don’t exactly have much choice. Somehow I don’t think anyone is going to come through that barrier with ‘lost dog’ flyers.” Feeling better—he recovered much faster this time, maybe he was building up a tolerance—he set the dog down, then climbed to his feet and reached for his pistol. She handed it to him, and he put it back in its holster. The dog, apparently having regained much of its strength, stood next to him, tail wagging.

  “Can it be both of ours?” she said, the tension in her voice betraying how difficult it was for her to ask.

  He leaned down, picked up the dog and handed it to her. “Of course it can, and mostly yours if you want.” The dog was light, maybe fifteen pounds, and did not seem to mind being handled. His eyes still hadn’t adjusted back to the darkness, but he thought he saw her smile.

  “Thank you.” She stroked the dog’s head as she held it, and he heard the animal sigh contentedly.

  “We should get back to the fire,” he said. “I saw ship lights on the horizon, the others were flashing SOS at them.”

  “Seriously?” He could hear the sudden excitement in her voice. “And you waited until now to tell me? Let’s go!”

  “Hang on a sec.” He took off his shirt and rubbed it in the sand, then shook it out. “Not clean, but it will do.”

  “There is a laundry machin
e in your cottage, you know,” she said as she watched him.

  “Are you sure? I didn’t see one. There’s not much room, I can’t image where it would be.”

  “It’s in the floor,” she explained. “I’m not surprised you missed it.” She hesitated, frowning slightly. “I didn’t mean that as an insult. I meant because it’s in the floor, easy to miss.”

  He smiled. “We’re making progress then. That’s encouraging.”

  They set off at a brisk march toward the campfire. On the way, Alex recovered the night vision box where he had left it in the sand.

  “It works with some sort of enzyme,” she continued as she walked. “There’s a powder you sprinkle on your clothes and you leave them overnight. In the morning they’re clean and smell fresh. There’s no water or anything.”

  “That’s interesting. How’d you figure out how to use it? I also don’t mean to insult you. It just doesn’t sound very intuitive.” It was both funny and a little sad that they had to qualify their statements in this manner.

  “I didn’t. There were instructions on the powder box.”

  “Well,” he said. “At least something in this god forsaken place comes with instructions.”

  They approached the fire, where Max and the others were still flashing SOS at the ships. Alex looked out at the horizon, but didn’t see the lights anymore.

  “What happened?” he asked Max as they got close enough to hear. “Did they sail away?”

  “No, the lights just went out—” He saw the dog and pointed. “Where did you get that?” He raised the flashlight to point at Yael, about to push the button.

  “Don’t!” Alex barked. “I told you not to shine that in people’s faces.”

  “Right, of course,” Max said quickly, not at all pleased to be reprimanded. “Hand that animal over. Does it have tags?” He stepped toward Yael and reached for the dog.

  “No!” she said, pulling away.

  “Give me the dog,” Max commanded, inching closer. Alex stepped in front of him.

  “She said no, Max.”

  The older man glared at him a moment, then his expression softened. “Alex, I need to examine that dog, see if it has tags. We can learn—”