Invasive Species

by Joseph Wallace

  Ranny lay on his back beside a small tree, his collecting gear—rolled-up mist nets, cloth bags, the harness he used to climb—scattered around him. His eyes were closed, his face gray.

  Trey squatted beside him, felt for a pulse. Found it after a moment, just a slight, delicate throbbing in the throat. Ranny’s skin was warm, but it had a strange, waxy consistency to it, as if in some strange way it had been molten and was now firming again.

  Trey called out his name, shook his shoulder, but Ranny didn’t stir.

  The long dreaming days.

  Trey aimed his beam and saw what he’d expected to: the telltale swelling on Ranny’s stomach, pressing against the inside of his shirt. Unblinking, Trey watched it. Half a minute, a minute. Nothing. Nothing.

  Then . . . something moving beneath the cloth. A sinuous flutter, quickly gone.

  Something coming to the surface of the skin for a gulp of air, then twisting and diving deeper once again.

  Trey stood. He let the beam describe a wider arc. Knowing what he was looking for and soon finding it.

  The girl lay perhaps eight feet away, on her side, back to him. Under the clear plastic rain poncho, her tight blouse, white with a pattern of flowers stitched in it, was untucked from the waistband of her short ruby red skirt. Her long brown legs were bare and slick with mist. So was her left foot, though she wore a white sneaker on her right one.

  Graciela.

  Looking at that one bare foot, Trey felt his fear dissipate. It was replaced by a kind of burning determination, the ice-cold certainty that always took the place of anger deep in his core.

  He knew that, whatever happened, he would never be afraid of the thieves again.

  As he took his first step forward, the shadows shifted. A thief moved, spiderlike, into view on Graciela’s hip, then stood there, staring at him. Slender black body shining with dew, wings flickering.

  “There you are,” Trey said.

  The thief tilted its head at the sound of his voice, but did not otherwise react. It was waiting, Trey thought. Waiting to see what his next action would be.

  He wondered if it knew what a gun was. Whether it understood what the birdshot could do to it.

  Trey tilted his head so that the beam shone directly into the thief’s eyes. It merely turned away from the light, watching him instead from the corners of its eyes.

  For a minute, maybe more, the standoff continued. Just as Trey knew—knew!—that it was dying to come for him, he wanted nothing more than to pull the trigger and blast its body into rubble and ichor.

  He lowered the beam a little. The wasp turned back to stare at him. What was going on in its insect brain? Conscious thought or only the primitive neuronal firings of a simpler species?

  There was one way to find out.

  He swung the shotgun down and poked the barrel into Ranny’s stomach. One twitch of his finger and the larva beneath the skin would die.

  Did the thief understand what he was threatening to do?

  The wasp sprang a foot into the air. Before Trey could shift his aim, it landed on Graciela’s bare leg, closer, facing him head-on. Its mandibles twitched and its wings made a strange chittering sound on its back.

  Trey had long since learned not to ascribe human emotions to other mammal species, much less insects. Still, he couldn’t help it. In this thief, he saw rage and something more: anxiety, even horror. Yes, it understood.

  Trey poked the barrel of the rifle deeper into Ranny’s stomach. Up the barrel and into his hand came a quivering motion from within the flesh.

  The thief came for him. As he’d known it would.

  Even so, even though he’d expected it, the attack was so fast, so unerring, that the wasp almost reached him. He barely managed to raise the shotgun, and if it had contained a single bullet instead of a birdshot-filled cartridge, he would have been dead.

  In the headlamp’s beam, he caught a glimpse, a snapshot, of the creature. Its reaching legs, green eyeshine, white stinger.

  Then he pulled the trigger. The gun kicked against his shoulder. The sound of the shot echoed through the forest. The familiar odor hit his nostrils before mixing with the smell of smoke. And the thief disintegrated before him.

  Trey stood still. Even over the thudding in his ears, he could hear the grunting roars of the howler monkeys his shot had startled.

  Jacking another shell into the chamber, Trey put his back against a tree and waited. Ten minutes, fifteen, as his hearing returned, the howler monkeys quieted, and the dead wasp’s smell hung in the air.

  Nothing. Maybe the two thieves—the one Ranny had caught and the one Trey had just killed—were the only ones here. The pioneers. The colonists.

  It was time to go. There was nothing he could do for Ranny and Graciela.

  Go.

  Only . . . he couldn’t.

  * * *

  ABOUT A MILE back to the research station. Another two up to the Jeep. All along treacherous, muddy trails, illuminated only by his headlamp.

  Trey was strong, but strong enough to drag or carry Ranny—who looked to weigh about 180 pounds—all the way, and then return for Graciela? He didn’t think so.

  Still, he had to try.

  Propping the shotgun against a tree, he bent over, got his hands under Ranny’s arms, and lifted. His plan was to use some version of the fireman’s carry, but he never got a chance.

  As he lifted, Ranny let out a cry, a sound of intense pain. Then he said, “No!”

  Trey, shocked, almost let him fall, but managed to return him gently to the ground. Only then did he see that Ranny’s eyes were open.

  Sightless eyes, slicked with an odd silvery sheen. They reflected the headlamp’s beam, gleaming like mercury as they shifted this way and that. Random motions, as if Ranny were looking at something no one else could see.

  As if he were dreaming.

  “Ranny,” Trey said, his voice a hoarse whisper.

  Ranny’s mouth moved. The sheen over his eyes faded a little. “Trey?” he said.

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  Ranny was looking at him. “Trey,” he said again.

  Trey said, “Yes?”

  “Kill me.”

  * * *

  TREY COULDN’T SPEAK for a moment. Then he said, “I’ll get you to a doctor. I promise. He’ll help. I’ll—”

  “No.” Only Ranny’s mouth moved. “You can’t. It hurts. . . .”

  “Then I’ll bring someone back here—”

  “No.” Ranny blinked, and when his eyes opened again the silvery shine was stronger. “They’re . . . here. In here. Forever.”

  He drew in a breath. “Trey,” he said. “Please. Kill me.” Another breath. “And . . . her.”

  His eyes gleamed, and he was gone again. Back inside his dreams.

  Trey sat there.

  Kill me.

  He couldn’t do it.

  * * *

  COULDN’T PULL THE trigger, at least. Was what he did instead any different? Any better? He never knew.

  But what other choice did he have? He was out of options.

  Unzipping his daypack, he pulled out the first-aid kit he’d taken from the station. Snapped it open and saw, amid the usual gauze pads and antibiotic creams and antihistamines, the scalpel he’d expected to find.

  These kits always included a knife or scalpel, a holdover from the days when people believed the first, best response to snakebite was to cut open the spot and suck out the poison-laced blood. Now, even though that theory was long out of fashion, habits hadn’t changed.

  Trey searched through the kit until he found a pair of forceps. Then, squatting over Ranny’s still form, he shoved the man’s heavy, wet shirt halfway up his chest. A couple of moves of the knife, one quick snatch with the forceps, and he was holding the larva up to the light.

/>   It was as Sheila had described: long, white, tensile, with black mandibles and large eyes and an almost unbelievable strength for something its size.

  Beneath him, Ranny stirred, drew in a ragged, gasping breath, and died.

  * * *

  TREY KNEW THAT he should keep the larva. Kill it and preserve it and bring it home.

  It was important. It might tell them things they had to know.

  But . . . no chance. With a movement that was like a spasm, he threw it to the ground. It writhed and twisted and bit at the earth until he ground it to pulp with the stock of his gun.

  For long minutes he stood there, not moving, hearing nothing but the roaring in his ears. Then, carrying the scalpel and forceps, he walked over to where the girl lay. Graciela, with her brown legs and bare foot, her face turned away as if she’d chosen to avert her gaze from what lay ahead.

  Trey rolled her onto her back, then pushed her shirt up, exposing her swollen belly.

  Under her skin, something moved.

  * * *

  “NO SPECIMEN?” JACK said.

  Trey was calling from the airport in San José. He was still covered in mud and sweat, and smelled of rotting vegetation and a bitter stink he thought would never leave him.

  He knew he looked like a madman. Felt like one, too.

  “No,” he said. “It was gone.”

  “And Ranny and the girl?” Sheila said. He hadn’t known that he was on speakerphone, that she was listening.

  “Gone.”

  Nothing but the crackling line. Then Sheila’s voice, closer. “Trey,” she said, “did you see them?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Shit,” she said.

  Still he didn’t speak.

  “There was nothing you could do.” Her voice was strong. “Remember that. Remember what you told me. Whatever happened, whatever you had to do, you had no choice.”

  He was silent.

  “Trey,” she said. “Come home.”

  TWENTY

  Marco Island, Florida

  KAIT HAD BEEN watching for days.

  As soon as school ended each afternoon, she’d leave Mrs. Warren’s fourth-grade class at Tommie Barfield Elementary and hurry home. Once there, she’d barely pause for a snack before heading out the kitchen door and down to the boat slip.

  “You give it a name yet?” Ma had asked one time, when she had Kait’s attention for more than thirty seconds.

  Kait had just shaken her head. Inside, though, she’d thought: That was stupid. You didn’t name wild creatures.

  They had their own names, she was sure of it, names they used for each other. Names you’d never know. You could decide to give them any name you wanted, but it wouldn’t mean anything.

  Now that she thought of it, maybe that was true for your pets, too. Their two dogs, for instance. Their setter, Fire (named by Da because in some lights his coat looked almost like flames), and their mutt, Chester (Ma had named him because she said he looked like a Chester). Maybe they called each other something completely different and wondered why people used such strange sounds to call them.

  Anyway, when Kait went down to their boat slip and looked at the dolphin, she decided not to give it a name. It was just the dolphin. Her dolphin.

  If it felt like telling her its true name, it would.

  It had first come to the slip two years before, when Kait was eight. Almost every day, the dolphin had been there, lazing in the warm water near Da’s boat. Sometimes it would dive for something to eat, but mostly it would just lie on the surface, its breath coming through the hole in its head like little explosions, surprising Kait every time.

  She would sit there for hours after school, watching the dolphin until dinnertime. Watching and drawing. That was what Kait did best, draw. She didn’t like to talk that much, but she loved to draw what she saw.

  Often the dolphin would look at her with its bright eye. She wondered what it thought when it saw her.

  “Is it sick?” she’d asked Ma and Da.

  They’d smiled at each other, who knew why, and Da had said, “No, it’s not sick.”

  “Then why is it always there?”

  Ma had given her a hug. “Keep watching, sweetie, and you’ll see.”

  And just a few days later, she had seen. She walked down to the slip early one Sunday morning and saw that now there were two dolphins, hers and a tiny little one, no bigger than some of her stuffed animals, lying in the water beside it.

  * * *

  NOW, ALMOST EXACTLY two years later, it was back. The mama dolphin. Alone again, but looking just the same and acting just as she had the first time. Lolling around in the calm blue-green water between their boat slip and the one next to it. Looking as happy as any creature on God’s green earth. (As Grandma Mary put it.)

  “Is she going to have another baby?” Kait had grown a lot in the past two years, and had a better idea what kinds of questions to ask. Actually, it was hard to believe how little she’d known, back when she was eight.

  “Sure looks that way to me,” Da said.

  So Kait spent every moment she could down there, by the slip, hoping to see the birth. Over the years she’d witnessed her share of rabbits and hamsters being born, chicks hatching from eggs, and even, once, a garter snake delivering itself of a mass of squirmy black-and-yellow babies that formed themselves into a knot before heading their separate ways.

  But never a dolphin. Kait wondered how many people in the whole world had seen a baby dolphin being born. Especially in the wild. Ones in aquariums or SeaWorld didn’t count. She didn’t think you should ever keep dolphins in a big tank of water, or orcas, either.

  But a wild one? Maybe she’d be the first ever.

  So, sitting on the edge of the dock, her legs dangling over the water, she watched and watched. And drew, of course. She might have changed a lot in two years, but she hadn’t lost her love of drawing.

  Sometimes other kids would come and stay for a little while, but Kait didn’t have that many friends and didn’t care when Amanda or Isabelle would drift away to do something they thought was more fun. Watching a lazy dolphin wasn’t their idea of how to spend a warm spring Saturday, and that was fine with her.

  She kept it company after dinner every night till dark, when Ma called her for bedtime. Then she’d pretend not to hear until Da came down, hoisted her up—laughing and complaining at the same time—and carried her back to the house. (She was ten now, and much too big to be carried. That was her opinion, at least, but Da didn’t share it.)

  She’d always known that she wouldn’t be able to watch every minute—even if her parents had let her camp out on the dock, she would’ve had to sleep sometimes. So she wasn’t especially surprised when she ran down to the water one morning before school and saw, floating at the mama dolphin’s side, a new baby, even smaller and more perfect than the one from two years earlier.

  With a rush of emotion that squeezed her heart, Kait instantly fell in love with the rubbery, gray creature, with its tiny beak and bright eyes. If she’d spent a lot of time at the slip before it was born, now she was there every single possible minute.

  Watching and drawing.

  * * *

  FOR THE FIRST week, the baby grew in leaps and bounds. Every day it seemed stronger, more active, following its mother farther from the shore and dock, diving a little deeper. Still it stayed mostly at the surface, happy, comfortable, the water rolling off its shiny skin.

  Then, one morning, something was different.

  No one else noticed, not the neighbors who stopped by to take a look every day, not the sea kayakers who put slip 173 on their regular route, not even Ma and Da.

  Only Kait saw. The baby dolphin stopped growing. It spent more time sleeping. Its dives were less deep, and it no longer ventured as far as it had just a few days earlier.


  The mama dolphin pushed it with her nose, urging it away from the dock. She looked around for the baby as she dived, rocketing to the surface out in the channel as if trying to capture its attention.

  But the baby just drifted.

  “Is it sick?” Kait asked Da as they sat side by side on the edge of the dock late one afternoon.

  “I’m sure it’s not,” he told her, though the look on his face said something else.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY Kait noticed the swelling. A bump on the baby dolphin’s back, a few inches from its blowhole. There was a round black mark in the middle of the bump, like a second, tiny blowhole.

  “Huh,” Da said when she called him to see. “Maybe it’s got an infection.”

  “Call the doctor.” Kait hated how her voice almost squeaked over the words. If ever she had wanted to be bigger, stronger, it was now. So Da would listen to her.

  “Please,” she said.

  Da listened. He called. But it didn’t make a difference.

  “Bunny,” he said, “they won’t come. If it was abandoned, maybe, but not if the mother is still with it.”

  “But it’s sick.”

  Da looked unhappy. “They say dolphins aren’t endangered. They say it’s just the cycle of life.”

  Kait heard: the circle of life. She’d seen that movie, The Lion King, on the Disney Channel. She understood what it meant. Despite what the movie said, it didn’t seem very noble to her.

  “So he’ll die,” she said. “Fish will eat him.”

  “Maybe you should stop watching,” Da said.

  Kait felt her chin lift. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared into her father’s eyes.

  He knew that expression of hers and didn’t argue.

  * * *

  THE SWELLING GOT bigger. The baby dolphin grew weaker. It was spending all its time on the surface now. It didn’t nurse as often, or for as long.

  Its mother stopped trying so hard to teach it. Kait thought she was giving up.

  Nobody else came to watch now. The neighbors were busy, and the kayakers paddled right on past.