Color Blind (Team Red) by T. Hammond Read Free Book Online Page A

at the yoke. The upward angle was consistent with him gazing up at me.
     
    “Oh Geez, Red.” As I spoke, the image faded. “I saw myself.”
     
    Red head-butted my thigh as I scratched my nails across the flaps of his ears. “It was easy, Teresa. Just like thinking words at you. I tried to talk too, but I don’t know if I can do both at the same time.”
     
    “Maybe that will come with practice, Pal. Now that we know we can do it, we can experiment with me touching you or not, to see if we need the physical connection. It may be easier because it’s so new for us, but we may be able to make the connection without thinking about it if we work at this every day.”
     
    I was officially excited now. This opened up a whole new world of possibilities. “Oh my God!” I said, excitedly. “I will be able to see David. I can watch him walk, and look at his face. Oh, Red. I have wanted to see him. I hadn’t realized how much until right this moment.”
     
    “Let’s try without touching,” Red suggested, as he stepped away from my hand.
     
    With a little effort to focus, I was finally able to picture my sneaker, half covered by the hem of my jeans. “My shoe,” I said.
     
    “Yes,” Red confirmed . “Let me move farther away and we’ll see if it’s the same as the mind-speak link.” From long practice, Red knew the distance of approximately thirty feet away, which seemed to be the farthest distance we could be apart that I could still hear his voice in my mind. Anything past that and it sounded like a bad phone connection. “Ready?”
     
    “Let’s try it,” I said. It took less effort this time, and I was able to see the area that enclosed the pond, including the tree that was a casualty of the drone practice. “Oh, Man,” I moaned. It was pretty shattered in the upper limbs. In the space of two heartbeats, I was mentally back at Janey’s house. Walking in the rain as lightning struck the tree in her yard. I heard the explosion of shattering wood, loud and violent. I smelled the strong odor of sulfur burning my nose as I drew a frightened breath. I had looked over my shoulder to see branches exploding away from the trunk, in wooden shards. A split second to bear witness to Nature’s fury, then nothing. Until now. How ironic, that as I see for the first time in almost a year, it’s a scene from my worst nightmare. My pulse was racing, and I had to make a serious effort to get my panic under control. The image was being projected into my head, so it made no difference when I reflexively squeezed my eyes closed in an effort to shut the picture from my mind. I gasped and inhaled, forcing air past a throat that was suddenly tight with a long-remembered terror. Deep breaths- In. Out. My hands were shaking, and I thrust them deep into the pocket of my coat. Out of sight, out of mind. Mmm, maybe not the best analogy under the circumstances.
     
    To distract myself as I calmed my heartbeat, I concentrated on the patch of snow, mounded against a large rock that made up an edge to the pond. I was seeing through Red’s yellow-blue color spectrum, and it looked like the focus was slightly off. It was my belief that dogs had sharper eyesight than people, but I needed to ask David to look up what dogs see so I could be sure. My heart rate was finally steady, and I was able to breathe without gasping.
     
    “This is so awesome, Red.” I forced a smile. The scenery changed as he looked around, and I got a little dizzy when he looked up suddenly. It took a few seconds to orient myself, but I soon realized Red had zeroed in on a drone hovering above his head.
     
    “Can you see it?” Red asked, holding both the mind-speak and visual links.
     
    “Yes, Red. I can. They are so small, I don’t know how you could possibly catch one when they are buzzing around the grounds,” I laughed, with giddy joy that I could share this new gift with him.
     
    The connection slammed closed as I heard Ken’s voice break into