Seed

by Michael Edelson

  Through all this shouting, the woman did not speak, or even look up. Perhaps she was in shock, or maybe deaf, but her lack of reaction made Alex very nervous. Barbara ran up to her just as he closed from the other side.

  “Miss,” Barbara said calmly but firmly, her voice radiating authority. “Miss are you alright?” The woman, probably in her twenties, didn’t look up. She continued to rock back and forth, staring at the floor. Her brown curls were dirty and matted, and there was blood on her arms and hands. This close to her, his nose recoiled at the smell, though it was not unfamiliar. Soldiers living in the field often smelled like this, though they themselves got used to it gradually to the point where it only bothered someone who was exposed to it without being given time to acclimate. The woman wore a long green skirt and white t-shirt, both filthy. A silver pendant glittered just below the base of her neck, distracting Alex for the briefest of moments, but it was enough.

  Without warning the woman’s head snapped up and glared at Barbara with eyes so full of hatred and rage that Alex recoiled. He had never seen such ferocity. Her hands flew up and she grasped Barbara’s shirt, pulling her down as her lips pulled back to reveal bloodstained teeth. Her mouth opened as her head came up, her teeth closing around Barbara’s cheek.

  Alex’s rifle snapped out in a blur of motion. The hard edge of its stock smashed into the woman’s temple and her head rocked back, striking the edge of the pew with the sound of cracking bone. The woman went limp and crashed to the floor as Barbara fell back, tripping over something in the aisle. She kicked out with her feet, pushing away from her collapsing assailant. She screamed, though her kicking slowed when she saw that the woman wasn’t moving. She clutched at her cheek, but when she took her hand away Alex saw only a faint red outline—he had acted in time. He hadn’t known he could move that fast.

  “What the fuck was that?” Tom shouted hysterically. Patrick was shaking his head, mouthing something Alex couldn’t make out. Both were clutching their rifles, barrels swinging wildly.

  “Get those weapons under control!” Alex ordered sternly. Both men looked down as though they only then realized what they were doing and lowered their carbines. Yael held hers in the low ready position. Her eyes were wide, but she was slightly crouched, ready, and most importantly, not panicking. He knew he could count on her, and that gratified him.

  Alex pointed his rifle at the woman and poked her with the muzzle. She didn’t move.

  “Barbara,” he said. “Please examine her. If she…attacks again, I’ll shoot.” Barbara hesitated, looking at the body uncertainly, but then got to her feet and approached slowly.

  “What the fuck, man,” Tom was muttering. “This is some night of the living dead bullshit!”

  “She’s not breathing,” Barbara said, kneeling over her. “No pulse.” She reached into her backpack and pulled out a clear plastic mask with a tube sticking out of it. Cupping the mask to the woman’s face, she adjusted the position of her head, hesitated, then lowered her face over the mask and began to breath into it. After a few breaths she lifted her head and began to push down on the woman’s chest. “I doubt this will work. She’s most likely dead.”

  “Oh man,” Tom whimpered. “Oh man.”

  “Not like that,” Barbara said as she switched from pumping the woman’s chest back to breathing into the mask. “The blow to the head killed her.” She turned to Tom, who was breathing heavily and staring at the dead woman. “She was very much alive a few seconds ago, so cut that bullshit out.”

  Tom nodded. “Sorry. It just freaked me out, the way she attacked like that.”

  “She’s gone,” Barbara said after about a minute of breathing and pumping. She was feeling around the bloody mess of matted hair where Alex’s rifle had struck. “Her skull is cracked. I could keep trying, but there’s not much point, this is a bad fracture.”

  “Do you think she was…” Alex hesitated, not sure how to phrase his question. “Crazy?” She was dead. He had killed her. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Barbara shrugged. “I have no idea, but I suppose that’s the only reasonable explanation. Why else would she try to bite me?” Her hand touched her cheek momentarily, then fell away. The bite mark was fading, but the skin around it was red. “I want to examine her, as thoroughly as I can.” She turned to Alex. “I’d like your permission to do an autopsy.”

  “You mean cut her open?” She had been lovely, with big green eyes below delicate brows, a slight hook to her nose, just enough to accentuate her long face and prominent cheeks. He had broken her, forever. He hadn’t meant to, he only meant to stop her. He had never killed anyone up close before. In Afghanistan he had fired at distant targets. He had seen bodies, but he wasn’t sure which were the ones he had shot, or if he had even hit anyone at all. But there was no avoiding it this time. He had killed this woman.

  “Yes. I can’t learn much, but I want to find out whatever I can.”

  Alex nodded. “Go ahead. We’re going to search the rest of this building while you do that. Patrick, you and Tom stay with the doc, Yael, you’re with me. After we clear this place we’re going to wait outside.” He heard the crack again in his mind, felt her head recoil beneath the rifle’s stock. All the king’s horses.

  It didn’t take long to clear the cathedral, most of which was roofless and open to the elements. There was a basement with storage rooms, almost completely empty except for religious paraphernalia and other useless junk. After a few minutes of searching, the two of them returned to the lawn beyond the walls and waited.

  “Are you alright?” Yael asked.

  He shook his head. “Not even a little bit.”

  “I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through.”

  He looked at her. “I killed that woman. The only survivor we found, and I killed her.”

  Yael reached out to him, hesitated, then put her hand on his arm. “You had no choice.”

  “I did. I could have hit her a lot less hard.”

  “Maybe that wouldn’t have stopped her. Maybe Barbara would be missing a chunk of her face, and the woman would still be dead.”

  “She had a name,” Alex said. “We shouldn’t call her ‘the woman.’ We should go there and get her wallet. We have to find out her name.” He turned towards the cathedral, but she grabbed his collar with both hands and shook him.

  “Stop it,” she said sternly. “Stop it right now. If you need to let it out again, I’m here for you, but pull yourself together.”

  He stared at her, blinking, confused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I’ll pull it together. For the others. They need me.”“I don’t care about the others,” she said. “I care about…” she stopped, dropped her hands and turned away, unable to finish her sentence. He stared at the back of her head, riding a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. His eyes caught movement, and he turned to look. Patrick ran from behind a wall, his face pale. He stopped just past the edge of the lawn, bent over and vomited.

  “Oh man,” he said between gasps. “She’s cutting her head open!”

  Chapter 15

  The sun was near the horizon by the time Barbara came out of the cathedral. Tom had replaced Patrick as her guard and walked behind her, his face pale.

  “There was significant brain damage,” Barbara said. She was wiping her hands on a piece of cloth. No, not cloth. A shirt, someone’s shirt. It was a white shirt, but her hands turned it red. “I don’t mean from the crack to the head. Areas of her brain were…well, deteriorated. I’ve never seen anything like it before, but that’s not saying much, it’s not my specialty.”

  Alex frowned. “Do you think that’s what happened here? Some kind of biological weapon that makes people crazy? Could we be…contaminated? Exposed?”

  She shrugged. “There’s always that danger, but I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because there are no biological containment suits in my lab back at the warehouse.”

  “T
hat’s…so simple. Come to think of it, I didn’t see any NBC gear in the arms room either. So what happened to her?”

  “The damage is physical, and apparently random, though most affect behavior centers. I’m not a neurosurgeon, but I know the basics. I took some tissue samples, I can check it out when we’re back at the colony.”

  “But we found a survivor,” Tom said. “That means there could be others, and maybe not all of them are crazy. Maybe someone could tell us what happened here.”

  “If I don’t kill them first,” Alex muttered under his breath, then felt Yael’s boot hit his calf. He turned to glare at her, but she smiled at him and shrugged.

  “So what do we do now?” Tom asked.

  “It’s going to be dark soon,” Alex said. “We’re going to spend the night on the beach.” He picked up the radio. “Ryan, Sandi, this is Alex.” He waited for several seconds.

  “This is Ryan, did you find anything?”

  “Ryan, give me your sitrep.”

  “What?”

  Alex sighed. “How are you doing? What’s going on?”

  “Oh. We’re fine, a little sea sick, just sitting here, lots of rocking.”

  “Good. Wait ten mikes then return to the beach. Copy?”

  “What?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” he said, then into the radio, “Wait ten minutes, then return to the beach. Did you get that?”

  “Yes, got it. See you soon.”

  They made it back to the beach in just a few minutes. There were no obstacles in their way save for the foundation holes, and visibility was excellent in all directions. The boat was on its way in when they passed through the trees and it touched sand just as they picked a site above the tide line and dumped their gear. The sun started to set and the sky blossomed with pink and lavender clouds.

  “I’m going to post a watch,” Alex said after everyone settled down. “Everyone is going to stand guard for two hours, that should take us till first light.” He paused, making sure he made eye contact with everyone. “If you fall asleep on guard duty, you put all our lives in danger. That will not be acceptable.” He knew he had probably lost some of his authority when he had broken down by the cathedral, and then some more after killing the woman, but he also knew he had enough left to get them to do what he needed.

  “Danger?” Ryan asked. “Why? What did you find?” Tom had taken Ryan and Sandi through the tree line to see what was left of Honolulu, but apparently hadn’t told them about the survivor. Sandi was sitting with her hands around her knees, rifle leaned up against a piece of driftwood. She was rocking back and forth, just like the green eyed woman with the slight hook in her nose. Alex turned away. He couldn’t stand to look at her.

  “Tom can fill you in,” he said. “Okay then. Barbara, you’re up first, then Tom, then Yael, then me, then Ryan, and finally Sandi will take morning watch.”

  “Do we make a fire?” Tom asked. Alex considered it.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “If there are survivors, a fire might draw them here.”

  “Is that such a good idea?” Tom asked.

  “I think it’s worth the risk,” Alex said.

  “I agree,” Barbara said, then turned to Tom. “No more zombie crap, okay?”

  “I know, I know,” Tom said. “I’m sorry.”

  Alex hadn’t wanted to burden them with unnecessary weight and so hadn’t brought sleeping bags, though being on the beach in Hawaii made such things largely unnecessary. While Barbara and Ryan helped Yael gather wood and start a fire—another thing she apparently learned to do in the kibbutz—Alex took an entrenching tool from his backpack and dug a latrine pit as far from the camp as he dared. No one seemed in any hurry to go to sleep, but there was no avoiding that. They needed time to wind down, process what they had seen. It was almost completely dark now. The last of the brilliant colors had drained from the sky, replaced by somber grays and dark blues.

  “Too bad we can’t barbeque nutrient paste,” Tom said after the fire was lit and going strong. He mixed his powder in a canteen cup and started to drink it like a milkshake. His face had an ominous glow that scintillated in rhythm with the dancing flames.

  Alex looked around nervously, waiting for hundreds of shuffling forms to creep out of the darkness and try to eat their brains, but all he saw were birds. Giving up his pointless vigil, he found Yael standing away from the others, watching the waves roll across the sand.

  “I brought you something,” he said, and handed her a block of foam.

  “What is it?” She had taken off her vest, but still wore her rifle on her shoulder.

  “A piece of packing foam. You can use it as a pillow.”

  She brightened. “Hey, thanks. That’s a good idea.”

  “I um,” he began, suddenly too choked up to speak. “I wanted to say…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “After all you’ve done for me, it was the least I could do. Besides, it’s a mitzvah.”

  “A what?”

  “A mitzvah,” she explained. “It’s what we call good deeds. Helping others, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh,” he said, and for some reason felt slightly disappointed. “I get it. Keep in God’s good graces and all that.”

  She shrugged. “Fringe benefit, I suppose. Are you feeling better?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I’m not going to run off to find that woman’s wallet in the middle of the night, if that’s what you mean.”

  She almost laughed. “Good. Wouldn’t want that.”

  “Look,” he said and kicked the sand in front of him. “I have to say this, so be quiet and let me talk. Maybe you just did it as a mitzvah or whatever, but what you did, and the way you had my back, no one’s ever done that for me before. I mean except my family. I just want you to know it means a lot to me.”

  “It wasn’t just a mitzvah,” she said, then before he could say anything, “Goodnight, Alex.”

  “Goodnight, Yael.” He stared after her as she walked away, wishing he could figure her out. His own feelings were slowly becoming clear, but she was still a mystery.

  After making sure Barbara was up and about, he settled down on the sand with another foam block and tried to sleep. He couldn’t help hearing the others talking, which he supposed was a form of snooping, but as their commander he felt entitled. He made a morbid game of counting the number of times someone said “I can’t believe this is happening” or mentioned God in connection with the ravaged city. Sandi cried for a while, but then composed herself long enough to say goodnight and settled down within a few feet of Alex, probably because she felt safe next to him. He wondered if she would still have felt that way if she’d seen him cry on Yael’s shoulder.

  Tom apologized to Barbara for how he had acted, and she shrugged it off, saying she couldn’t blame him. Patrick and Ryan made some pretty wild speculations about what could have caused Honolulu’s destruction, but none of them were ridiculous or completely impossible, given the circumstances. All of the colonists so far seemed at least above average intelligence, and while that may have been a coincidence, Alex didn’t think so. That fact alone had implications he was too tired to consider.

  After a while, conversations died down or veered off topic. Tom told Barbara he wasn’t a real chemist, and she claimed that she wasn’t surprised. She asked for his reasons, and he told her it was a long story and that he would tell her and Alex when they got back to the colony. Patrick and Ryan’s conversation drifted from comparing IQ scores to arguing over Sandi as they tried to figure out which of the two she preferred.

  Alex smiled when he heard that, and wondered if Sandi was awake and listening. He decided that she probably was. Here they were, in the devastated city of Honolulu, the midst of the greatest mystery and tragedy in the history of mankind, and in the end it always came back to the simple basics. That gave Alex enough comfort that he was finally able to let go and drift off into sleep.

  *

  Yael woke him when her watch was up, and h
e in turn woke Ryan. Morning came without incident, and before Alex was fully awake they were back across the tree line. This time they left the boat on the beach, and Alex glanced back nervously as they started walking towards another of the old standing structures. This was more of a small complex than a building, and unlike the cathedral it still had its roof and some of its windows.

  They saw the man before they got within fifty yards of the main entrance: middle aged, balding, wearing a white smock and sweat pants. He was sitting under an overhang next to a thick square pillar, completely unaware of their approach. Either he was just like the woman, or he hadn’t spotted them yet.

  “Weapons ready,” Alex said. “But don’t shoot until I say so. Got it?”

  “Got it,” a few of them said simultaneously.

  When they got to within twenty meters of the man he looked up at them, but didn’t seem to react in any significant way. He studied them for a few seconds, then looked away. There was no blood on him at all, but the closer they got the worse the smell of excrement became. There were stains on both sides of his pants.

  “Fuck,” Alex swore. “This guy’s shit himself!”

  “All part of the job,” Barbara said cheerfully as she approached the disheveled survivor. “Cover me, will ya?”

  Alex nodded. His weapon had never veered from the man’s center mass.

  Barbara held her backpack in both hands before her like a shield as she walked. Alex’s finger tensed on the trigger as his targeting reticle moved from the man’s chest to the top of his head. At this range the bullet would hit a few inches below the point of aim, and he wanted to nail him in the brain at the slightest provocation. If he so much as flinched, Alex was prepared to put him down. In hindsight the decision to kill was always clouded in uncertainty, but in the moment, he had a friend to protect and all was clear.

  The man looked up and smiled. “Wawa,” he said, and pointed to his pants. “Wawa.” He had friendly eyes and was otherwise unimposing, but then the woman in the cathedral hadn’t looked particularly frightening either until she’d leaped at Barbara’s face.