Seeders: A Novel (22 page)

“Do you really want to help?”

“Sure.”

“Then perhaps you’d like to work on your grandfather’s project with me.”

“Luke.” Isabelle stood in the doorway, sounding stiff and looking directly at her son. “I fixed you some breakfast in the kitchen. You need to—”

“Why are you so anxious to leave?” Jules interrupted. “The boat will be here Wednesday. Surely you can wait until then.”

“Might I remind you there’s a dead man in the woods?”

“Ah, well. He’s waited this long.”

“Luke, go wash up for breakfast.”

“I’m talking to Dr. Beecher.”

“You can do that later. I said wash up.”

“
Wash up
. What am I, five years old?”

“How about, go put soap and water on your hands, rinse them off, and eat your oatmeal.”

“Fine.” He shrugged.

Isabelle stepped into the lab as Luke left.

Jules stood, with an awkward bow. “I’m sorry for that scene in the kitchen, Isabelle. Truly I am. Have you thought about what I said—continuing your father’s research?”

She straightened. “Have you thought about what
I
said? Whatever’s in those biscuits is making you hallucinate.”

He grinned, stepping toward her as he spoke. “I would have expected more from you, Isabelle. Even your son has an open mind about it.”

“I’d rather you not discuss it with him.” Her expression hardened. “The boat won’t be here for eight days,” she said in a clear voice. “That’s a nice campsite in the woods. Maybe you should stay there until it arrives.”

His pupils grew large and dark. “What are you saying?”

“I’m simply looking out for the children.”

“You think I’m dangerous?” He closed in on her space. “You want me out of the house?”

She backed away, but he reached out and grabbed her arms.

“What happened? We started out so well, I could tell you were falling in love with me. Go ahead, say it!”

“Let go of me.” She stared at him, horrified. Across his forehead was a rash of small bumps that followed his hairline down the left side of his temple. Her hand came up and stopped. “What is that—on your face?”

He pushed her away, smoothed down his hair.

She watched him walk to his jacket, slung over a chair.

“Mom?” Luke stood in the doorway. “Could you come with me for a minute?”

Isabelle glanced at Jules, zipping his coat. He was tight-lipped, eyes fixed on the window, and then he started for the back door.

“Yes, I’m coming.”

Isabelle walked with Luke toward the kitchen. “I want you to stop talking to Dr. Beecher.”

“Maybe he’s right, about the plants.”

“Get that idea out of your head. It’s ridiculous.”

They reached the kitchen and Luke stood at the end of the cabinets. “Take a look at this.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Exactly.”

Then she realized the radio was gone. “Someone took it.”

“No. It’s still here.” He went to the garbage can and pressed the foot pedal.

Isabelle looked inside to see it was smashed to pieces. Her heart was pounding.

“Sean?” he asked.

She shook her head. “My guess is Dr. Beecher.”

“Why would he do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But it looks like we’re stranded for another eight days.”

CHAPTER 23

OVER THE NEXT THREE DAYS
, Jules remained at the campsite.

At night when the sun went down, his world was shrouded in darkness. His eyes strained to catch tiny bits of moonlight that fell like brushstrokes on leaves and branches.

Jules lay inside the tent on a pile of scratchy blankets listening to the chatter. Sometimes it was so loud he would move to the beach, sitting with his knees curled up to his chest while his muscles shivered uncontrollably. He’d watch the waves break white, hugging a blanket that was damp from the spray of the sea.

Although the beach was quieter than the woods, he could still hear their cries and he’d plug his ears, pull the blanket over his head. He never bathed, rarely ate, and his appearance became frightening. The rumpled clothes he wore were filthy and his hair a tangled mess. Black rings circled his eyes from sleepless nights, merging with his grizzled beard and dark bumps that speckled his cheeks. If he actually had a mirror, it would show an unrecognizable face.

Jules dreaded going to sleep. Nights were terrifying. As he dozed, they would enter his mind, a physical force connecting to his frontal lobe. He could feel data streaming into his brain, sounds and flashes of colored lights on a ticker tape that twisted through gray matter and gave him chills, as if they were downloading a long, complicated program. At the same time, thoughts and memories were leaving his head. Jules could see the images being emptied out: trees being cut down, logs floating like corpses down a river, forests ablaze, a ground full of stumps, concrete cities being erected, acres of trays filled with mutated seed. It was exhausting to download so much information and in the morning Jules felt physically ill.

Sometimes the messages became too enormous to hear. Their pain and suffering was unbearable and Jules wandered the woods, holding his ears or rolling on the ground, just wanting it to stop. Other times it came as a
thwack!
that would shake the earth and he would feel a piece of his body slice off, an arm or a leg, and then the warm sting of blood pouring out, his heart beating frantically, life creeping toward its bitter end.

“What do you want!” he screamed one night, but there was no answer. The sun was setting and it was almost dark. Jules knew they wanted him to do something, but what?

He studied the green notebook for a while and decided that he was supposed to spread the plants all over the world. Finish the job George had started and failed. But there was more, and the sounds became unbearable. He fell into a depression and violent images swirled through his mind. Visions of his childhood and vegetal slaughter.

There was finally a moment of silence, and it came with a message that was crystal clear.

Kill them.

At first he didn’t want to believe it. After all,
they
had never shown any sign of wanting revenge. What if he was misinterpreting their meaning?

You’re a scientist, he told himself. Get ahold of yourself. That’s when he started to doubt everything. How could plants possibly understand a concept like murder, let alone how the human brain works? Even if they had the ability of cognition, it would be nothing like human thought. Why, it was preposterous. Entangling the thought waves of humans and plants would be like entangling the notes of a song with a Swiss cheese sandwich. They were two completely different things.

The campsite was nearly dark and thrown into a chaotic mess, but he searched until he found a pile of handwritten notes, specifically a list of three questions. He read the last two.

How are plants able to understand human thoughts?

What role does the fungus play?

Jules spent the rest of the night perched on a tree stump with a flashlight in his hand, reading the green book and trying to figure out the last two questions. He bit his nails, scratched his beard, and picked at the bumps on his forehead. He studied the drawing of the machine and read the entire book until the sun came up.

On that drizzly morning, the answer came to him.

He was squatting on a damp sleeping bag outside the tent, when the clouds above him cast an eerie shadow over the campsite. He looked at the ground as if he’d never seen it before. The way the fungus was draped over one particular area. The curves and spikes created a collage of shapes that were coming together.

Jules stared at it for several minutes, as light rain fell on his face.

His heart started pounding. He crawled to the spot and began peeling away layers of fungi. His fingernails scraped away the thick pile, exposing pieces of what lay beneath: hard edges, points and grooves, bits of color, until a recognized object was revealed.

Jules jolted back, realizing what he uncovered. His filthy hands were shaking so hard he had to hold them still. He kept digging, exposing much more and then stopped.

This is how George did it.

One word came to mind.
Seeders.

The two questions were answered together as one. It took several minutes to calm down. Jules quickly walked back to the tent and picked up the green journal that didn’t make sense for so long. He gazed at the
things
he unearthed, then back to the journal. Now when he read it, the words formed perfect sentences as if he’d cracked the code. He understood everything; indeed he might have written the book himself.

*   *   *

Isabelle became increasingly worried about Jules after he moved out of the house. Rarely did she ever see him, and when she did it was at a distance, either pushing a wheelbarrow of supplies into the woods or digging up ryegrass.

Only once she found him in the house, raiding the fridge, stuffing frozen chicken in his mouth, ripping the raw meat with his teeth like an animal. He didn’t see Isabelle watching from the doorway, as he stood there in his filthy coat, pants, and muddy boots.

When he left, she dragged a bench in front of the door.

“No one leaves the house,” she told the others.

Not that Luke wanted to leave. After his experience in the woods, he was glad to have an excuse to stay indoors. He and Monica did their best to occupy themselves with board games and they were constantly sneaking off to make out, although none of the encounters lasted long. As soon as things heated up, Isabelle would appear as if on cue.

She had to keep an eye on Sean too, which was nearly impossible. He wanted to leave the house so badly he threw fits and Isabelle needed Luke to help restrain him. A few times, Sean escaped unnoticed but always returned a few hours later, muddy but calm, and always humming the same tune that was quickly growing on Isabelle’s nerves. Frustration consumed her and twice she attempted to lock him in his room, but somehow he always got out.

Ginny was glad to have everyone trapped in the house, devoting at least some part of the day to looking for her treasure. She insisted that Isabelle search the laboratory, so when they were quite sure Jules was gone for good, she started investigating the lab, checking cabinets and closets for any kind of note or jewelry box. Ginny kept her company, all the while doing a jigsaw puzzle of kittens in a basket.

“Shouldn’t you help me look?” Isabelle asked.

“I’ve done enough searching. It hardly seems right to have a woman my age doing all the heavy lifting.”

Isabelle noticed the trash can was overflowing with balls of crumpled paper, bits of fresh bread. She flattened a few wrinkled pages on the desk and found they were filled with rambling sentences that made no sense. She wondered if Jules had been coming back to the house when they were asleep. The thought gave her a chill.

That night she was filled with worry and stayed awake after everyone had gone to bed. She kept her door open, listening for sounds in the hallway. It was getting late and she was never going to get to sleep, so she went downstairs, straight to the lab. With an ear pressed against the door, she heard footsteps on the other side. The urge to flee the hallway to her room fought hard against the curiosity of knowing what he was up to. She listened again, heard the
swoosh
of pages flipping back and forth and the soft scribble of a pen. There was heavy breathing and then something tipped over and the sound of pencils dropping.

Isabelle cracked the door open an inch.

Jules was squatting on the floor in the dark room, positioned beneath the window in a direct beam of moonlight. His face was just a shadow, but in his disheveled appearance he looked every bit the homeless man he’d become. He was writing in a notebook, making squeaking sounds with his throat and clicks with his tongue. Every so often he snorted or chuckled. Isabelle shut her eyes, knowing he was getting worse with each passing day.

She silently crept back to the front hallway, to the closet where Bonacelli had put her father’s rifle. It was on the bottom shelf with a box of ammunition. She loaded the magazine with two bullets and then tiptoed upstairs. There was a chair at the top of the landing with a good view of the staircase. She sat down and got comfortable, rifle over her knee, knowing that anyone who looked threatening wouldn’t make it to the second step without being shot in the head.

She blinked hard, hoping to stay wake, and silently thanked Colin for teaching her how to shoot. If only Wednesday would hurry.

*   *   *

Early the next morning, Isabelle walked sleepily into the lab and found Jules tied to a chair. She almost cried out when she saw his face, the metamorphosis was so dramatic. He looked as though he’d been marooned on the island for years, in tattered foul-smelling clothes and his shaggy hair in knots. His face was a mosaic of dirt, beard, and purple bumps.

He was half asleep, looking up at her with heavy lids. Plastic zip ties secured his ankles and left wrist to the chair. His right hand was tied with a rope that stretched down to his feet and around the desk leg where it lay on the floor. He must have pulled it taut with his mouth.

Isabelle was stunned.

His eyes followed her across the room.

“Jules, did you do this?”

He nodded.

“What’s happened to you?”

His voice was low and raspy. “…
Hurts
.”

She went around to the back of the chair to see that the hand wrapped with rope was blue and she tried to figure out the best way to loosen the knot without actually setting him free.

“
Please,
” he whispered and licked his dry lips.

She had never seen someone look so helpless and weak. She stooped down to untie his hand, but then paused, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Just one hand wouldn’t hurt, she thought and quickly unraveled the rope.

“Thank you,” he wheezed and pressed his pained hand to his chest.

She couldn’t stand to see him in agony. It would be inhuman to keep him restrained like this for days. She found a pair of scissors to cut the zip ties.