Eden (20 page)

“
Of course, Eve. 
But, he…” Gabriel struggled for words.

“
I’m going now.  It’s
only been six hours, I can still catch up with them.”

“
Eve, we need you
here.  The three of you are our best scouts and guards. 
It’s best you stay here.”

I wanted to hit
Gabriel.  I was furious.  I wanted to punch Avian so hard
it made his head spin.  How could he do this to
me?   “Is Graye even healed yet?”

“
Avian cleared him this
morning,” Gabriel said quietly.

I clenched my jaw and just
shook my head.  I couldn’t believe this.  I had gone on
every raid in the last two years.  I didn’t like being left
out.

“
I’m going hunting,” I
said through clenched teeth.  I didn’t wait for a response as
I headed toward the armory.

The door banged against
the wall as I shoved it open.  I jumped as West whipped around
to look at me.

“
What are you doing in
here?” I nearly shouted.

“
I just got off scouting
duty,” he said defensively.  “Just putting my stuff
away.”

I shook my head and
squeezed my eyes closed for a moment.  “Sorry I snapped at
you.  Grab your bow, we’re going hunting.”

“
Really?” he said, his
voice hitching up a notch with excitement.

“
Yeah, come on,” I said,
irritated again as I grabbed my bow.  The emotions I wasn’t
supposed to have were all over the place today.

We headed out east,
towards the higher mountains.  We’d been on enough scouting
and hunting trips together now to know how each other moved. 
We listened and watched as a team.

What I didn’t expect was
West’s cool and easy silence.  He never once asked me what was
the matter, why I was so angry, or even about how I had been
avoiding him.  We were just two soldiers, two
hunters.

We paused as we came to
the edge of the trees.  A rock cliff jutted out in front of
us, dropping down far enough we couldn’t see the bottom. 
Perched on the edge was the fattest wild turkey I had ever
seen.

I gave West one glare
which he returned with a smile that said,
Fine, this one’s yours
.

I drew an arrow and sent
it slicing through the air.  It embedded itself in the
turkey’s fat neck.

“
Well, that couldn’t have
been easier,” West said as he stood from our hiding
spot.

“
Hey, you won’t be
complaining when your stomach is full tonight,” I shot back as I
walked forward and pulled the arrow out of the bird.  I wiped
it clean on a mossy tree trunk.

“
Well it isn’t a bear,” he
joked as he handed me a length of rope.

I just rolled my eyes at
him as we tied it by its legs to the back of my pack.  We set
out again on a trail heading south without another word.

Being so far away from
Eden, we didn’t try for anything bigger than birds and
rabbits.  As we felt the temperature drop slightly as the sun
started to think about going down, we took a break on a rock
outcropping that overlooked a valley.

I closed my eyes and
breathed the summer scented air in.  “I almost wish I could
just stay out here for a few nights, away from
everything.”

“
Why don’t you?” West
asked as he leaned back, propping himself up on his
elbows.

“
You know why.  I
have jobs, duties.  They need me.”  I took a sigh. 
“I just wish…”

“
That you could have a
break,” he said.  It wasn’t a question.  He knew he’d
filled in the blank.

“
Yeah,” I said as I let my
breath out, opening my eyes to the view before me.  “It’s all
just so…”

“
Exhausting?”  This
time he didn’t seem so sure.

“
I guess,” I said as I
looked down at my hands in my lap.  The hand that had been
eaten away from the barbs was covered in more rippled scar
tissue.  “It’s a lot of pressure I suppose.  Not that
I’ve really known any different.”

“
You’re pretty amazing,”
he said after a few moments of quiet.  “You know
that?”

“
Just ‘cause your
grandfather made me that way.”

“
No,
you’re
amazing.  Eve.  The
human part of you.  You’ll never stop fighting for them. 
You always put them before yourself.”

And he was right.  As
much as I liked being with West, as good and alive as he made me
feel, I would keep him pushed away so something like the incident
with Graye would never happen again.

“
They may be all that’s
left,” I said quietly.  “I’ve got to keep them alive. 
We’re already an endangered species.”

“
Just don’t forget who you
are in the process,” he said as he looked out over the
trees.

“
This
is
who I am.  I’ve never been
anyone else.”

“
Well, maybe you need to
find something that’s just for you.”

I considered this. 
What else was there to do besides what I already was doing? 
What else was I passionate about?  As I glanced back over at
West, a weird feeling settled into my stomach.  I wanted to
ponder that maybe West or Avian could be what was just for me, but
I couldn’t.  I’d already decided that.  That was too
dangerous.  “Maybe,” was all I could say in an attempt to
steer my thoughts in a different direction.  “We’d better get
going.  I’ve got night watch tonight.”

“
You mean every night?” he
said as we stood and started down a deer trail.

“
Every night,” I agreed
with him.

“
No one will do a better
job.”

“
Exactly.”

I couldn’t look at Avian
for the next five days.  I knew if I did I would explode on
him, and there was a part of me that was human enough to not want
to do that.

Eden got a big surprise
that fifth day though.  Graye and Bill returned.  In a
truck and a flatbed trailer.  Full of non-perishables,
clothing, shoes, tents, and other supplies.

We came running out of our
tents in the early hours of the morning, alarmed by the noise the
truck created.  It was a sound a lot of people couldn’t
remember hearing and for some of us, a sound we had never heard
outside of the city.  Half of us came running out with guns,
ready to mow down a Hunter on an ATV.  Graye had jumped out,
arms waving.

We all pitched in, helping
to unload the supplies, shipping off the clothing and shoes to
Victoria, sending the food to the kitchen help, and sorting
everything else out where it needed to go.  Once all the work
was done, the two of them pulled Gabriel, Avian, and I into a
tent.

“
Something is happening
out there,” Graye said.  It was only then that I noticed the
slightly panicked look in his eyes.  “Hunters were coming out
of everywhere.  I don’t know, I mean, maybe they were just
being more aggressive.  We had to take the truck, just to help
keep them off of us!”

“
Slow down, Graye,”
Gabriel said, holding a hand up to him.  “Were there actually
more Hunters?  We thought there were getting to be fewer of
them.”

“
I don’t know. 
Maybe.  They were just everywhere.  We couldn’t seem to
hide from them.”

“
They’re getting more
aggressive,” Bill said, his voice low.  “We used most of our
ammo keeping them off of us.”

“
We have four bullets
left!” Graye said with a fearful sounding chuckle.  “It’s a
good thing we got the truck to start or we wouldn’t have gotten out
of there.”

“
If they’re getting so
much more aggressive, is it going to be possible to go back again?”
Avian asked, keeping his voice down. 

Neither of them said
anything for a moment.  They exchanged looks and I knew their
answer before either spoke.

“
If it keeps going like
this, there’s no way,” Bill answered.

“
I don’t know how we made
it out of there, much less with all the supplies we got,” Graye
said as he rubbed his hands together.

“
Do we move again?” I
asked as I looked at Gabriel.

“
It’s likely they’re
getting more aggressive everywhere,” Avian said when Gabriel seemed
at a loss for an answer.  “West said it’s designed to
spread.  There isn’t much of any one left to spread it
to.  It’s desperate.  Any other cities will probably be
the same way.  And besides, we have the gardens here. 
We’d be smarter to stay put.”

I swallowed hard as
another thought occurred to me.  If the Hunters were getting
so desperate, they were likely to keep pressing further and further
into the country and outskirts looking for what was left of the
human race. 

Something within told me
our dangerous world would soon become much more
dangerous.

Gabriel pursed his lips
and gave a small nod.  “That’s it then.  No more going
back into the city.  We can’t afford to lose anyone
else.  We should be alright, the gardens are doing just fine,
and we even have a little bit of the stores from last year left
over.”

I felt an itch inside of
me as we disbanded.  It felt like we needed to do
something.  I didn’t like the feeling that we were just
sitting and waiting around to be attacked.  But what were we
supposed to do?  There were billions of Fallen out
there.  How were we supposed to take a stand against
them?

SEVENTEEN

I woke up the next
afternoon with a plan. 

They were going for an all
or nothing wipe out.  The Fallen wanted to take us all. 
We had to fight back.  There had always been a part of me that
remembered they were all human, but we all knew being infected made
you as good as dead.  You didn’t come back after you were
infected.  We were going to have to use the same approach they
were using themselves.

We had to get rid of them
all.

“
Avian?” I called before I
even entered the medical tent.  I found him washing out a
handful of bloody rags in a basin of sharp smelling water.  I
swallowed hard, knowing we wouldn’t be able to go after more
bleach.  Just one more thing that had become so
precious.  “What happened?” I asked.

“
Brady,” he said with a
sigh.  “He fell out of a tree and split his forehead
open.  I stitched it up.”

“
Is he okay?”  I was
surprised at the small pain that formed in my chest.

“
He’ll have a nice scar
all his life, but he’ll be okay.”  Avian wrung out a rag and
set it out to dry on the table.  He looked up at me
expectantly, waiting for me to say whatever I found important
enough to say to break my silent treatment toward him.

I paced around the tent,
trying to gather my thoughts into a question, or just a statement,
or something.

“
The CDU, it shorts out
anything cybernetic,” I said as I continued to pace.

Avian paused, as if
questioning what was going through my mind.  “Yes.”

“
There’s got to be designs
for it somewhere,” I said as I rubbed my cheek, continuing to
pace.  “If we could get those designs we could figure out a
way to make it bigger.  There’s got to be a way to make a
pulse that would destroy anything cybernetic within a certain
range.  Someone has to have designed something like this when
everything started.”

Avian turned to face me,
his face suddenly tired looking.  “It’s not that simple,
Eve.  For starters, where would we even look for plans like
that?  We wouldn’t even know where to start.  And then
there’s the matter of getting into the city.  It might be
possible if we could have free reign of the
right
city for about a week, but
that’s not going to happen.

“
And then there’s the
materials to even build it.  And none of us here would
know
how
to build
it.  None of us has the right know-how.”

I stopped my pacing and
stared at Avian, feeling hollow again.  “What are we supposed
to do then?  Just wait here for them to come get us? 
What happens when a dozen Hunters come?  Thirty, forty, or
fifty of them?  I can’t fight them all off.  We can’t
fight them!”

Avian took a step toward
me and placed his hands on my arms.  “Calm down, Eve. 
Take a deep breath.”

I then realized my breaths
had been coming in short, shallow gasps.  My head was spinning
and my heart was pounding.  “What’s wrong with me?” 
Black spots were forming on the edges of my vision.

“
Breathe, Eve,” Avian said
as he placed his hands on my cheeks, looking into my eyes.  I
forced myself to focus on the intense blueness of his as I took
deep breaths in and out.  Slowly, the dizziness in my head
ebbed away.  “Better?”

I bit my lower lip, closed
my eyes, and nodded my head.  “Something’s wrong with
me.  Maybe I’m sick.”

Avian chuckled. 
“You’re not sick.  It’s just emotion.  It’s
normal.”

“
I don’t like it,” I
said.  Not even realizing what I was doing, I leaned into
Avian’s chest and wrapped my arms around his waist.  His arms
came around my shoulders, his chin resting on the top of my
head.  It didn’t take long for my heartbeat to match the
rhythm of Avian’s.  I wanted to stay there forever and just
forget everything that felt so out of control.  Everything was
safe here.