High Edge: A Seeders Universe Novel

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Then they set up a generator to run on the balcony outside of the apartment, so both of the apartments on the floor could have their own power and air-conditioning.

  They got it running to cool down the apartment.

  Every so often he got the sense that Gina was watching him and he would glance up and give her the thumbs-up signal. He hoped she would like the place.

  And he really hoped she saw his note about picking up Candice on the way here.

  Actually, he hoped more than anything that she was real.

  After they were done, the professor and the boys went back downstairs to watch a movie. Once again Benny stretched out in his living room, his lights low so he could see out over the darkening city.

  There were a few lights scattered over the dark city, but not many.

  And he knew people out there could see his lights here as well.

  If he hadn’t just imagined everything about Gina, very soon they would be recruiting more and more people to join them and help with survival.

  And if Gina was real, he had about a thousand questions to ask her, not only about her job and people and space, but about herself.

  He really, really wanted to get to know her better.

  A lot better.

  And never once in his life had he felt that way about a figment of his imagination.

  He managed to doze off in his chair after an hour or so and crawl into bed by ten with the alarm set for five a.m. He wanted to be downstairs to greet Gina and Candice.

  He had a hunch she would start early, in the coolness of the morning.

  That’s what he would do.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BENNY WAS JUST crawling out of bed when Gina took one last look at her screens, made sure she had what she needed in her light pack, including water, and informed transport she would be leaving the ship shortly.

  She wore jeans and a light white blouse with a sports bra under it. She had on tennis shoes and had three changes of clothes and a pair of running shoes protected from the smell in a sealed bag.

  She wore nose filters against the smell for herself and carried a gas mask from the city below for Candice. But she knew that wouldn’t begin to stop the odor of walking past and over thousands of dead bodies decomposing in the heat of the streets.

  It was not going to be a pretty sight, and she hoped Candice had the stomach for it. If the girl fainted, Gina would transport them both closer to the big stone building that was their destination.

  She might have to do that anyway if Candice was passed out. Or if Candice couldn’t walk, she would just drug her and transport them both.

  Gina did one more double-check of her light provisions. She could transport back to this apartment at any time, but better that she was prepared to stay on the surface as much as possible.

  She took a deep breath and then said to herself, “Here we go.”

  A moment later she found herself in the dim apartment where Candice had been hiding. The decomposing smell of human flesh hit her hard and she forced herself to breathe through her nose to let the filters hold the smell down some.

  She moved down the hallway to where Candice had been staying in her bedroom. The girl was curled up under the blankets.

  “Candice,” Gina said softly. “We need to get out of here and back to the big building with your friends.”

  “Who are you?” Candice asked weakly, looking up at her.

  “I’m just a friend,” Gina said. “Come on, let’s get you back to the professor and your friends.”

  “You can take me there?” Candice asked, but didn’t move.

  “I can,” Gina said. She tried to help Candice up, but the young girl just wasn’t there. Her arms felt like limp sacks of flesh. There was no doubt to Gina that Candice wasn’t going to be able to walk the fifteen blocks to the big stone building.

  Especially through all the death.

  Gina eased a sedative out of her pack and brushed it over Candice’s face as if she was brushing the girl’s filthy hair out of her face.

  Candice slumped out cold almost instantly.

  Gina put the gas mask on Candice’s face, then put one arm under the young girl’s shoulders and the other under her thighs and lifted her. Candice didn’t weigh that much.

  Gina then jumped to a spot she knew was blind to Benny’s cameras about a half block away from the big stone building and around a corner.

  The smell on the street was ten times worse than it had been in the apartment and it made her stagger.

  She had imagined this to be bad, but nothing like this.

  And the bodies around her were bloated and ugly colors and didn’t look anything close to human anymore.

  Her stomach threatened to rebel, but she managed to control that by looking up at a wall and focusing on a fire escape there.

  Then she forced herself to breathe only through her nose, but the smell made her eyes water and she wanted to just stop and throw up.

  She moved around the corner so Benny’s security cameras could see her and then leaned against the side of a building for a moment, still holding Candice in her arms.

  The feel of the solid stone building wall gave her strength.

  This was going to be so much harder than she had ever imagined.

  After a moment she started forward, making sure to walk mostly in the street around the cars because that was far, far easier than walking around the bodies she didn’t want to look at on the sidewalk.

  When she was within a hundred paces of the main door to the big stone building, it flew open and both Benny and the professor came charging out, moving as fast as they could into the street.

  “Got her,” Benny said, smiling at Gina and taking Candice.

  The professor moved around and supported Gina and the four of them headed into the building.

  “I’m fine,” Gina said. “And I think she is as well. She just fainted.”

  “Professor, get the doors locked back up and the alarms reset,” Benny said. “We’ll take her to the floor below yours for cleanup and such.”

  Benny got onto an elevator carrying Candice and Gina followed.

  “Glad I wasn’t dreaming,” Benny said as the door closed and they started up.

  Gina smiled at him. “Glad you weren’t either.”

  Then all the way up they just stared at each other, smiling like kids on a first date.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ON THE EXCUSE of looking at their security set-up, Benny had the professor go down to the lower levels with him. Benny had a hunch that if he hadn’t imagined Gina, and she had seen his note, she and Candice would be arriving in the next half hour or so, before the sun really climbed into the sky and started to heat up the mess outside once again.

  The lower levels had a faint smell of rotting death, but the solid building was holding most of it out. But Benny had no doubt it was going to be a long, hot, stinking summer.

  As Benny and the professor reached the security room, an alarm sounded and there, on the screen, Gina staggered around the edge of a building about a block from their main doors and leaned against a wall.

  She was real!

  Spaceships and rescues and millions of survivors were all real.

  Holy shit! How was that possible?

  But it was.

  He just stared at the screen, his mouth open, every muscle in his body frozen.

  Gina Helm, a human from a very great distance away, stood there on the corner with Candice in her arms.

  Gina had the exact same short black hair that he remembered, and the trim body now dressed in jeans and a light blouse. She looked just as she did on the spaceship in orbit.

  She was real!

  It had not been a dream.

  Gina rested for a moment against the building, then went into the street and started toward the main door, seemingly carrying Candice without much of a problem.

  “That’s Candice!” the professor shouted.

  That shocked Benny into
movement and the two of them took off running down the two flights of stairs and to the front door. Benny got it open and they both ran out into the intense stink of the street as Gina got close.

  He smiled at Gina, not at all believing his eyes.

  Then he took Candice from Gina’s arms.

  Candice was so light, it shocked him.

  As the professor locked up, he and Gina took Candice up the elevator to the floor under where the professor and the boys lived. It had once been a number of small offices, each with bathrooms. The room had a large main area just off the elevators. They had set up that floor with showers, trash disposal for clothes that could not be salvaged from the smell, and soaking sinks near some wash machines for the clothing that could be saved.

  They had also brought in about forty bathrobes of all sizes and had them hanging around the area. No one was allowed onto the living floors smelling like the death in the streets. That was the rule of the building and an important one.

  He put Candice on a tabletop near the center of the big area and checked her vitals. She seemed to just be sleeping.

  “I had to knock her out with a light sedative,” Gina said. “She should be fine in a few hours and some food.”

  “Good,” Benny said. “Very glad you saw my note.”

  “And that note was very good thinking on your part,” she said. “It forced me to research and learn a lot about why you could remember the ship.”

  “I’m interested in hearing about that,” Benny said, smiling at her.

  As the elevator dinged and the professor came bounding into the room, Gina turned and introduced herself, using the same name she had used on the ship.

  Benny figured that was her real name, but he would ask later to make sure.

  She told the professor she had seen Candice trying to make her way here and just helped her. Benny nodded to her in agreement of her cover story as she turned back.

  “You have showers here?” Gina asked, looking around.

  Benny showed her the set-up of the different offices, all with bathrooms and installed showers that they had put in, while the professor stayed close to Candice.

  “You bring a change of clothes?” Benny asked her.

  “Got some in sealed bags in my pack,” she said. “And my pack can be wiped down and won’t absorb odors. How about I get myself and Candice showered and cleaned up and into fresh clothes? What do I do with her old clothes?

  Benny showed her the black bags to wrap them up in and where to throw them down an elevator shaft they had blocked open.

  He was stunned at how calm she was acting and sounding. His heart was racing a mile a minute and it was everything he could do to stay calm.

  The attraction he felt for her was more now than it had been on the ship.

  “You should be able to save your clothes,” he said. “Toss them in a sink for them to soak and I’ll show you how to wash them later.”

  “Thank you,” she said, nodding.

  Then she looked into his eyes and both of them sort of froze.

  Finally he managed to say, “We have a lot of talking to do later.”

  “With that I agree,” she said, smiling at him and making the breath in his throat catch. “About more than you can ever imagine.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  GINA WAITED WITH Candice while Benny and the professor took showers, changed clothes, and tossed their other clothes into some hot water to soak. Then they headed upstairs, leaving her to help the young girl.

  She was stunned at how handsome Benny was coming out of that room with fresh clothes and wet hair. She just wanted to touch him. And that was so out of character for her.

  “We’ll be at the top of that flight of stairs if you need help with Candice,” Benny said as they left.

  “I’ll manage fine and bring her up with me,” Gina said.

  Then she stripped Candice and tossed her clothes away. Then Gina took off her clothes as well and put them in a sink full of water next to Benny’s clothes to soak.

  Then she picked up Candice and carried her to a shower in a side office.

  Candice didn’t wake up, which was fine. Gina got both of them scrubbed down and both of their hair cleaned. She used some of the special chemicals she had brought from the ship to neutralize the odor. She dried them both off and got Candice in underwear and a bathrobe.

  Then Gina pulled out one of her extra pair of clothes, took her nose plug filters out, and stored them in her pack, and got dressed.

  Then she wiped her pack down and put it over her shoulder.

  “Time to go the final steps to home,” she said to Candice as she picked her up.

  The young girl was so light, it was scary. She carried Candice up the flight of stairs without a problem.

  It felt good to actually be rescuing someone from certain death. She knew that they had rescued everyone on the planet, but that had only been for a few hours.

  This rescue of Candice, Gina hoped, would last, and that Candice would help rebuild this new world. All over the planet a thousand Seeders were doing the same thing, trying to help one person at a time to survive.

  When she reached the next floor, Benny, the professor, and the two young men were there.

  Benny quickly took Candice from Gina and got the young girl into a bed in a private room off to one side of the main room.

  The professor had fixed some soup and had some crackers. The two boys just hovered close by, looking relieved and worried for their friend.

  After Benny got Candice tucked in, he came out. “Take turns sitting with her and get her food and water when she wakes up,” he said to the professor and the boys.

  Gina then introduced herself to the two boys and both of them thanked her for bringing Candice.

  After a short time, Benny said in front of everyone, “We have an apartment you might like that we just finished, if you are interested in staying with us for a while.”

  He smiled at her and she nodded. “I think I would like that. There are a lot of things I can do to help out.”

  “We’ll talk about that tonight over dinner,” Benny said, smiling at her.

  Damn that smile of his could melt an iceberg. And she was far, far from being an iceberg.

  She and Benny climbed up the flights of stairs so he could show her the apartment they had set up for her. They didn’t really talk. She wasn’t sure what exactly to say yet. It slightly annoyed her that she was acting like a school girl with a crush on a guy, but everything about Benny affected her and she had no idea why.

  But she liked the feeling of really being attracted to someone. It had been a long time since that had happened and never this strong on first sight that she could remember.

  She left her pack in her new bedroom. She was going to like staying here. The apartment, even being put together from what had clearly been an office area, was comfortable and the view was something to behold.

  The windows in her living room showed an amazing city stretching far beyond the limits of the water on either side of the island. What had happened to this planet was one of the great tragedies of the galaxy. Of that she had no doubt.

  She walked slowly around, looking at all the details Benny had set up for her as he quickly described it all. Granted, she had watched them set up this apartment, but actually being in it felt different.

  It felt right.

  “This is wonderful,” she said after Benny was done with the short tour. “It seems perfect.”

  She smiled at him and he just looked into her eyes for a long moment.

  “Thanks,” he said, finally. “Not as good as your place on the ship, I bet.”

  “In some ways,” she said, “I think it’s better.”

  She wanted to add that it was better because he was close by, but she didn’t. She was amazingly attracted to this man, but she really didn’t know him at all. They both had so much to learn about each other.

  She had to be careful, not move too fast, even though she wanted to.


  Actually, what she wanted more than anything was to just kiss him and pull him to that freshly made bed.

  But she managed to remain in control.

  And she had no idea how she was going to tell him about the Seeder part of things.

  “How about we go down and check on the professor and the boys and Candice,” Benny said after a moment of silence. “Grab a little lunch, then bring it back up here and talk.”

  “That sounds perfect,” she said.

  And it did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  BENNY CHECKED ON Candice, who still seemed to be sleeping comfortably. The professor and the boys were not going to be far from her. He hadn’t realized how much her disappearance had really bothered them until Candice showed up on the ship.

  Now it seemed her appearance had given them new life. They had set up a chair just inside her open bedroom door so someone would be there when she woke up.

  When he came out, the professor and David were sitting at the big oak meeting table they used to eat meals and Freddy was sitting just inside Candice’s door listening to their conversation.

  Gina was standing, leaning against a counter so she could face everyone. And it felt wonderful to have her here and part of this group.

  It actually felt natural, which was odd considering she had only been here an hour or so at most.

  He dug out of the fridge the fixings for sandwiches and started to put them together.

  “I think we need to be getting a few more floors ready for more guests,” he said as he worked. He was using some of the last thinly-sliced roast beef from the deli that they had kept in the freezer. He was going to miss deli roast beef more than he wanted to think about.

  And bread. He and the professor had talked at one point about trying to figure out how to make bread and grow vegetables and other things, but at the moment, with canned food and other things that didn’t spoil quickly, they had more than enough to make it for a year or so. It just wasn’t going to be a varied diet, but it would keep them alive.