Seed

by Michael Edelson

  He had killed her. Not Bob, not Max, him. Alex. He had sent her to her death. She had insisted, but he was the soldier, he was the one who was supposed to know what to do. He started to cry. His body convulsed as strongly as it had in the barrier, but he stopped it, stopped the tears. There would be time for grief later. Now was the time for death.

  He walked through the aisles again, this time paying attention. He picked what he needed, including a heavier but more effective armored vest. It was called Dragon Skin Mk II and it was made of small overlapping armored plates that offered greater coverage and increased mobility.

  Long minutes passed as he prepared to leave the arms room. He was carrying over a hundred pounds of gear, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before. A steadily burning rage gave him all the strength he needed, enough to hardly feel the weight. He checked the cameras one more time. There was still no one in the hallway, but Reynard and Kristoff had taken positions outside, behind trees, pointing their rifles at the warehouse exit. They were waiting for him.

  Returning to the computer, he brought up the security menu, unlocked the doors to his friends’ cabins, then activated the PA system and spoke into the microphone.

  “This is Alex.” His voice was cold, alien. “Everyone, get in your homes and stay there, for your own safety. Max, the others…I’m coming for you. Pray, run, hide, it doesn’t matter. Nothing can save you now.” He released the talk button and headed for the airlock.

  On his way out he saw his reflection in the mirror by the door. What was leaving that arms room was more tank than man, and the look of hatred in its eyes—his eyes—would have scared him, if he were still capable of fear.

  Once he was in the hallway, he let his rifle hang free and took two fragmentation grenades from his vest. Holding one in each hand, he pulled the pins with his teeth, one at a time, taking great pains not to lose his grip. As long as he held the grenades, the spring loaded safety levers would remain attached, and they would not explode.

  He paused by the side of the door, then kicked it open. Gunfire erupted almost immediately. Bullets slapped against the metal walls inside the warehouse and left dimples. The mystery metal was definitely not aluminum, more likely titanium. This was important information, especially now—titanium walls would stop bullets, aluminum walls might not. As the dimpled doors swung back, the gunfire stopped. As he had expected, the untrained fools had emptied their magazines and were now reloading. He stepped into the doorway and threw both grenades out as far as he could.

  “Oh shit!” someone screamed as Alex pressed against the inside wall and covered his ears.

  The ground shook with two nearly simultaneous detonations, like the grand finale of a fireworks extravaganza. He felt the shrapnel pepper the reverberating walls and, grabbing his rifle, burst through the doors.

  He caught movement, and fixed on it. One of them was running into the jungle. He gave chase, and despite the weight of his gear, he quickly caught up to him. It was Kristoff. The stooge turned back to look at his pursuer and then tripped over an exposed root, dropping his rifle, which had no magazine in it. He wasn’t wearing his body armor.

  “Please don’t…” Kristoff started to say as he lifted one hand over his face. The other hand moved towards his pistol. Alex didn’t let him finish. He fired a long burst that struck Kristoff in the chest then walked up to his face, where the bullets tore open his jaw and left his head a ruined mess. Turning, Alex ran towards the warehouse, looking for Reynard. He saw some blood by one of the trees and immediately took cover behind the thickest trunk he could find. The crack of automatic rifle fire came from a nearby cabin. Leaves and bark showered down on his helmet as he raised his carbine and positioned his hand over the trigger of the under-barrel grenade launcher. He caught movement by the side of the cabin, aimed at the ground just beyond and fired. The weapon thumped as the 40mm projectile flew to its mark and exploded into a cloud of dust.

  His protesting knees pushed Alex upright and he ran to the other side of the cabin, where he circled the corner until he saw Reynard, pressed against the wall, looking the other way through the dust. He heard Alex approach and whirled around, but it was too late. A long burst and he was down, his body limp save for his right foot that kicked feebly into the wall of the cabin as his blood rushed into the soil. Reynard had not discarded his armor, but repeated impacts had shattered the ballistic plates. Alex dropped his nearly empty magazine and replaced it. The smell of feces wafted from the corpse, from either a release of the bowels or a ruptured intestine.

  He put a bullet in Reynard’s head, just to be sure, then loaded another grenade into the M203 and headed towards Max’s cabin—Burger King. Yael had thought up the name. He stopped for a moment, overcome with pain, but he forced himself to go on.

  His PA message had apparently gotten through—he didn’t see anyone outside. Spotting the governor’s cabin between two others, he was about to circle around to get a better look when he heard shots behind him and felt something slam into his lower back with almost enough force to knock him to his knees. It struck him just between the back and side plates of a standard IOTV body armor vest. He started to panic, afraid that he would die before he could exact his vengeance, but then he remembered that he was wearing Dragon Skin. The pain was intense, but the armor held. He whirled around, still moving, and fired, though he hadn’t yet spotted anyone. Movement betrayed someone hiding just behind one of the cabins. Someone big. Bob.

  Alex stopped running, turned around and started walking towards the man who had killed Yael. Bob peeked around the wall and tried to bring his weapon to bear, but Alex shot at him. The bullets bit into the wall of the cabin and Bob ducked out of sight.

  Circling the other way, Alex cleared the corner just in time to see someone being shoved out of the cabin as Bob disappeared inside and closed the door behind him. The girl Bob had pushed out, the Goth that Max had forced into his bed, looked at Alex and her eyes widened. She cried out, scrambled to her feet and ran.

  Alex walked around to the front of the cabin, then released his rifle and unslung the AT-4 rocket launcher that was strapped to his back. He backed away, and after looking over his shoulder to make sure that nothing and no one was behind him, he unfolded the sights and aimed the weapon at the wall near the door. Disengaging both safeties, he cocked the mechanical firing pin and pressed the trigger.

  The weapon belched a cone of smoke and fire as the rocket’s wake buffeted his face. His knees trembled from the blast as a flash of light flared from the side of the cabin, accompanied by a sharp crack so loud that a jolt of pain coursed through his ringing ears. Smoke and debris exploded in all directions as Alex dropped the empty launcher and took up his rifle, advancing towards the ruined building. He could barely make out a blackened hole in the wall through the smoke. The force of the explosion had blown out the door and all the windows. Bob was crawling out, one arm dragging limply by his side. His face was black, burned, ears bleeding.

  Alex knelt over him and unclipped his weapon from the sling.

  “I didn’t kill…” Bob started to say, but didn’t get to finish. Alex smashed his head with the butt of his rifle, raised it, hit him again, and again. He felt the skull give way as the head deformed under his blows. Dark blood flowed freely from Bob’s ears and mouth.

  A part of Alex was disgusted by what he had done, yet another part relished in his vengeance and thirsted for more.

  “Two to go,” he said, then heard gun fire. Turning around, he circled the smoke filled building for cover and saw Richard in Burger King’s open doorway, shooting in the direction of the smoke. Alex took careful aim and fired once. Richard collapsed, screaming and clutching at his stomach. Lining up the red dot with his head, Alex remembered that Rich had been the one to activate the barrier. He waited a moment and let him feel the pain of his wound, then put him out of his misery with a bullet through the brain.

  Max walked out of his cabin, unarmed, and stepped over Richard’s lifeless bo
dy.

  Alex approached him. He caught movement in the periphery of his vision and saw that there were several people watching from their cabin doors.

  “I surrender,” Max said confidently, raising his hands. “There is no need for anyone else to die here.”

  “You were dead the moment your dogs touched her,” Alex said, then raised his rifle and emptied his nearly full magazine into Max’s chest in one sustained burst. It nearly cut him in half. What was left of the governor lay twitching in the bloodstained grass.

  Turning away from the carnage, he forced himself towards Yael’s cabin. He saw the open door, the blood, but not the arm. Tom and Sandi were standing outside. As soon as they saw him, they ran to him, asking questions, saying things, but Alex didn’t hear them.

  As he got close to the house, he saw Barbara, leaning over Yael, and he stopped, staring in disbelief. Yael was moving, talking, as Barbara was wrapping her head in clean white bandages. She saw him and immediately got to her feet and ran towards him. Barbara was forced to let go of the bandage, which trailed behind Yael like the tail of a kite.

  “Oh, Alex!” she cried as she jumped into his arms. “You’re alive!”

  He held her tightly and wept. She was alive. Nothing else mattered.

  Chapter 30

  “We should get going,” she said, still holding him. “The others are waiting.”

  “I thought I lost you,” he said, unable to release her. The frosted windows lit the room with morning’s light, banishing the comforting darkness. Too exhausted to talk or make love, they had slept through what remained of the day and all of the night. The radio broke their slumber moments ago, when Tom announced that he had successfully hacked into the server that controlled Max’s terminal.

  “I thought I lost you too,” she said as her body tensed, then shuddered slightly before relaxing. “In fact I was sure of it. Until I saw you in there. How did you survive for so long?” She stroked his head, her eyes fixed on his hair, as though she were counting the strands.

  He shrugged. “It didn’t seem like a long time, maybe a couple of minutes.”

  “You were in there for just over twenty minutes!”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “You amaze me sometimes.”

  “You came for me,” he said. “You crawled through the barrier. You could have died. What do you say to someone who does that for you?”

  “There’s nothing to say. What you did…”

  He cringed. “Yael, I’m very sorry, I lost control.” Their dead and deformed faces haunted him, especially Bob’s. The brutality of what he had done was too much, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand the images without bursting into tears.

  “Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Don’t ever be sorry, not for that.”

  “You don’t…” he started to say, unable to get it out. “I mean you don’t think I’m…”

  “I think you’re a hero. You saved us all. Some of the others might not see it that way at first, but eventually they’ll come around.”

  “Heroes don’t cave in people’s heads. I could have let some of them live. Kristoff begged for his life.” Even as he had reached for his weapon, but that didn’t matter now, not when it was guilt’s turn at the wheel.

  “And the ones you spared could have shot you in the back,” she said. “You let them all live, remember? And how did they repay you? Did even one of them say ‘don’t do that Max, that’s not right’?”

  “I guess not,” he said, grateful to whatever god or force of the universe that had kept her from harm. He didn’t think he could deal with what he had done without her support. Her head was still bandaged, but the wound was small, and there was no concussion. Bob had hit her with the butt of his rifle as soon as she walked into her cabin. He could have easily killed her, but he had chosen not to for reasons Alex would never know, or understand. He doubted it was anything benevolent, considering what he knew of the man.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Are you okay? About Jonathan?”

  Her eyes welled with tears. “I didn’t mean to hit him that hard.” He instantly regretted his words. What a bastard he was, to try to find comfort in shared guilt!

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said quickly. “I would have killed him if he’d survived. You are without blame.”

  She shook her head, but managed to smile. “Thank you for trying.”

  “I’m just so sorry it had to come to that.” She nodded, and they lay still for moment. The dog sighed contentedly from the base of the bed. Alex was glad that it had stayed out of sight during the troubles. He wasn’t sure what Max’s goons would have done to it.

  “Shall we?” she said finally.

  They got dressed and left his cabin, armed only with pistols. With Max and his men gone, there was no need to walk around like they were in a war zone. Tom had taken charge of securing all of the weapons from the battle, and there had been plenty. The only threat now would most likely come from outside the barrier. Or through whatever lines of communication the “government” used to access the colony.

  As they walked to the former governor’s house he noticed the stares, different from anything he had seen before. Some looked at him with fear, others awe. Most were a combination of the two. No one wanted to meet his gaze, and most took a step back, or went in a different direction when they saw him coming.

  “Alex,” someone said. “Um, Captain Meyer, sir?”

  He stopped and turned, and saw a familiar face. The man was lanky, with wavy brown hair.

  “You’re the guy from the boat building detail, right?” Alex asked.

  “Yes sir,” the man said nervously. “Name’s Joe.”

  “Just call me Alex. What can I do for you?”

  The man shifted his weight apprehensively. “Well, I was wondering if it would be okay to get started working on the boats again, maybe with the same people. I know most of them would want to do it, and with the amount of fish the one boat is bringing in…”

  “Sure,” Alex said. Why was he even asking? “Of course you can. I was going to put you in charge of that anyway. You were the only one who really knew what the fuck he was doing over there. Do whatever you think is best. I’d like at least three more boats built, considering how many people we have.”

  Joe smiled. “Great! I’ll get started right away. Thank you!” He headed off towards the beach, obviously excited.

  “You’re going to have to get used to that,” Yael said.

  “What?”

  “People turning to you for leadership.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “Serves me right, I guess.”

  When they were in sight of their destination, Alex turned to look at the house Bob had tried to hide in. It was gutted. Windows shattered, interior destroyed. The Goth girl walked out, carrying a broken food dispenser. She was trying her best to clean the place, and judging by her haggard features, she hadn’t slept.

  “Miss,” Alex said. She startled, then turned to see who had spoken and gasped, freezing in place.

  “It’s okay,” Alex continued. “We’ll get you a new house. What’s your name?”

  “Gigi,” she said apprehensively.

  “Well, Gigi, as soon as I get to Burger…I mean the governor’s house, I’ll have Tom reprogram the locks on one of the vacant cabins. I’m sorry about yours. You can let him know which one you want…there are plenty to choose from.” Because he had killed a lot of people, but he had the good sense not to say that out loud.

  She seemed surprised. “Thanks.”

  He nodded, then resumed his trek to Burger King.

  Tom was seated at the Terminal, and the others stood around him. Including Wawa.

  “I went and got him,” Barbara explained. “As soon as we finished cleaning up the mess.”

  “Sorry about that,” Alex said. “I didn’t mean to cause so much damage.”

  “No way,” Barbara said, shaking her head emphatically. “The
y deserved it.”

  “It was fucking awesome!” Ryan said, then noticed how the others looked at him and reddened. “Sorry sir, I don’t mean to make light of it.”

  “No problem. I’m just glad none of us were hurt.”

  “Chief,” Tom said. “Sorry to interrupt your guilt trip, but you’re going to want to hear this.”

  “First things first,” Alex said. “How did Yael get out of her cabin?” He had asked her the day before, but all she knew was that her door hadn’t been locked when she tried it. “I can’t believe Max would have been so careless, especially after how I fucked up trying to lock him in.” Saying his name was strange. He had gotten so used to complaining about him when he was alive that it was hard to adjust to him not being around. It was even harder to adjust to the fact that he had murdered him.

  Tom leaned back in the chair and grinned. “Remember when I told him I couldn’t get into the cameras?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well I lied. I was already in. But I didn’t have full access yet, not to the other stuff.”

  “So he gave you his password! You clever bastard!”

  “That’s right,” Tom agreed. “I am a clever bastard. But I only had time to do two things. One was to reprogram our cabin locks to no longer respond to an override, though of course I had to make it look like they did.”

  “What was the other thing?” Alex asked.

  Tom’s smile deepened. “You’re gonna love this one, Chief. I lowered the intensity of the barrier.”

  “That’s how you survived!” Yael said excitedly.

  “I tried to lower it to the same levels we use when we go through it,” Tom continued. “But there was no way to do that and hide it, so I just kept trying numbers until I got the lowest one it would take without triggering an alert, which was seventy one percent.”

  “That’s still pretty high,” Yael muttered.