Eden (28 page)

“
You haven’t told Sarah
we’re leaving,” I said instead.

“
No,” he said simply, his
voice catching in his throat.

It felt as if my insides
had hardened and I could only nod my head again.  My eyes
dropped to the dirt at our feet and my arms wrapped around my
midsection.

Avian placed his warm hand
on my cheek and I squeezed my eyes closed as relief flooded my
system.  I craved more though.

“
Things are going to be
okay,” he whispered.

My eyes rose to meet
his.  “I don’t see how,” I quietly said back.

“
Somehow they will be,”
his eyes burned as he stared back at me.

There were a million
things I wanted to say to Avian in that moment.  I wanted to
tell him that I wanted to know it was him that I wanted.  I
wanted to tell him that I didn’t want to be alone tonight.  I
wanted to tell him that in a way I wished it was just him and I
that were leaving to go into the unknown.

But how could I say those
things when I didn’t even know if he felt the same way
anymore?

“
Good-night, Avian,” I
said quietly as I took a step away from him.

“
Good-night, Eve,” he
whispered back, his burning eyes following me as I walked away into
the dark.

Graye had taken over two
of my night watches and I now felt lost at nights.  It was
difficult for me to sleep at nights now that I had changed my
schedule for so long.  I wandered the perimeter, feeling
restless and idle.  If only my vision was better at night.
 I could be hunting or scouting, or something.

Maybe then I could outrun
these feelings I didn’t want to be dealing with.

I didn’t even think to
stop myself before I was standing at the entrance of West’s tent.
 I couldn’t make myself go inside.  I could only stand
there, feeling like I was being torn in two.

The flap was pushed aside
and a half-asleep West poked his head out.  “Eve?  What
are you doing?”

I shook my head. 
“I’m not really sure.”

“
Well don’t just stand
there.  That’s really creepy,” he said quietly.  “You
want to come in?”

I hesitated, hating myself
at the moment.  Had I ever felt hate before?  Towards
anything other than the Fallen?  But I hated what I was
doing.  I wasn’t sure how to stop myself. 
“Yes.”

I stepped in, diverting my
eyes when I realized West was not wearing a shirt. 

“
Sorry,” he said when he
noticed I couldn’t look at him.  He started pulling a shirt
on.  “It’s hot tonight.” 

“
We’ll be experiencing
even hotter next week,” I said as I looked around the tent for a
place to sit.  There was nowhere but his bed.

“
Next week,” he said as he
rubbed a hand over his eyes.  “Wow.  It hasn’t quite hit
me yet.”

I stood there, staring at
West, fighting with the emotions I felt inside.  I wanted to
feel the fire again, to push and see how far I could go till I
burned to ash.  And yet something inside of me felt that was
wrong.  Being with someone wasn’t just about feeling the
blaze.  There were other things you were supposed to feel as
well.

“
Can I stay with you
tonight?  Will you just…” I hesitated.  “Hold
me?”

He looked at me for a
moment, a million different things running through his head. 
“Of course,” he answered, his voice hesitant.

West lay back on his cot
and I folded myself into his chest, his warmth immediately seeping
into my skin.  He wrapped his arms around me and I was
surrounded by his scent.  I pressed my cheek into his chest,
listening for his heartbeat.  Exactly the same but yet so
different from Avian’s.

“
Are you okay?” he
whispered into my ear.

I shook my head. 
“No.  But I hope someday I will be.”

TWENTY-THREE

Two days later, the flap
of my tent was opened in the dead of night.  Avian stepped
inside, his face grave and illuminated by the lantern in his
hand. 

“
Can you come with me?” he
asked.  I had never heard his voice sound so rough.  I
then noticed the red rim around his eyes.  I nodded once and
followed him through the dark without a word.

Somehow I knew we were
going to his tent before I had even left mine.  The darkness
felt heavy and cold, despite the summer heat.  My hands felt
clammy and my insides hollow.

We stepped inside and I
felt myself freeze up in despair.

Sarah lay on her cot, her
eyes closed, rimmed with a frightening shade of red.  Her face
was covered with a sheen of sweat and her entire frame trembled
slightly.  Her breathing came in terrifying gasps.

“
She’s been unconscious
for more than twenty-four hours,” Avian said, his voice sounding as
if it were being dragged over rocks.  “I can’t wake her
up.”

I knelt at her side,
pushing the hair back from her face.  Her chest twitched
violently as her body fought for air. 

“
Sarah?” I said quietly,
taking one of her bony hands in mine.  “Sarah?” I said again,
my lips pressed into her clammy skin.

Avian sank to his cot,
resting his face in his hands.  In a few moments his shoulders
started to shake as the tears consumed him.

I knew then why Avian had
asked me to come.  He had wanted me to be able to say
good-bye.

I closed my eyes as I
pressed my lips to her hand again.  Every time Sarah had
gathered me up in her arms, every encouraging word she had spoken
to me as a young teenager reverberated in my mind.  Flashes of
her smiling face swam through my head.  I recalled all the
squabbles she and Avian had gotten into, remembered all the days
they wouldn’t talk to each other afterwards, and then the awkward
apologies that followed.

West, Bill, or even
Gabriel might say that I had never had a mother, never known a
sister.  But he was wrong.  I’d had Sarah.  She was
better than both.

“
I’ll always miss you,” I
whispered, surprised at how rough my voice sounded.  Avian’s
sobs became all the louder as he heard my words.  “I will
always remember you.  I don’t know that I would have turned
out as human if it wasn’t for you.  You gave me a family when
I didn’t have one. 

“
Thank you for everything,
Sarah.”

Avian gave a
heart-wrenching cry, his shoulders shaking violently.  In that
moment I had to push out his pain and stay with my best
friend.  These were our final moments together.

The sound of Sarah’s
labored breathing became all the more terrifying over the next
hour.  Her skin started turning a grey purple and her hands
grew cold.  I squeezed her hand all the tighter.

Just before dawn, Sarah’s
body was finally still.

We buried Sarah by the
lake.  Bill and Graye had found a perfectly smooth salmon
colored rock and had somehow managed to carve her name into its
surface.  Gabriel snapped out of his stupor just enough to
speak, to give honor and remembrance to her name.  Avian
hadn’t said a word since he had come to get me the night Sarah
died.  I held his trembling frame for two whole days
after.

TWENTY-FOUR

I rolled the blue barrel
up the ramp and it settled at the front of the truck bed with a
small sloshing sound.  I hopped down and West helped me roll
the next one in.  The rest of the first group started packing
in the rest of the water, then loaded the supplies and our food
stores.

The boxes I grabbed
rattled as I picked them up and I suddenly realized just how
valuable all of our ammunition had become.  We couldn’t grow
ammunition, we couldn’t scavenge it out of the woods. 
Ammunition had to be found in civilization and it had become nearly
impossible to go into the cities.  We were going to have to be
even more careful than ever.

Sarah’s death seemed to
have woken something back up in Gabriel.  I had talked to
Avian about it.  He’d explained that more than likely, Gabriel
had just snapped.  He’d been trying to keep everyone alive for
so long and finally, after recent events, he just couldn’t take
anymore.  But he was back to his old self, taking charge and
making sure things were taken care of.  It was he that had
come up with our future means of leaving messages, just twelve
hours before we were to leave. 

“
What are the Fallen?”
Gabriel asked one day.

“
The Fallen?” I asked,
confused at his question.

Gabriel nodded.  “The
Fallen.  What are they?”

“
Robots.” West said. 
I hadn’t heard him approach us and jumped at his voice.

Gabriel nodded again,
bending down to pick up a rock.  “And what are they made
of.  What makes them tick?”

“
Metal.”  I said,
watching him pass the rock from hand to hand.  “Nanites. 
Pulses and currents.  I don’t get what you are…”

“
Exactly.”  Gabriel
interrupted.  “They aren’t organic.  Not anymore. 
They don’t see the world.  Fallen don’t notice nature. 
The cybernetics in them only seek out human tissue, to spread
itself.  We’ll use nature to hide our messages.”  He
crouched to the ground, gathering stones that had any size to
them.  Carefully, he started stacking them, one on top of the
other.  “The Fallen won’t notice them.  They will just
see the rocks.  But we, Eden, we will see the messages.
They’re called cairns.”

“
We could leave notes at
the bases of them,” West said, his voice excited as he observed
Gabriel’s work.  “The things we’ve found, any warnings. 
If we place them under the stones the Fallen will never see
them.”

“
Exactly,” Gabriel said,
his smile disappearing into his beard.  “My wife has been
copying the maps as exactly as she can for the last few weeks so we
can leave locations.  We run a smaller risk that we will be
permanently separated that way.  Pick a destination in the
direction we are headed and let us know.  We have our general
direction but there is going to have to be room for change. 
Who knows what we’re walking in to.”

The work on the trailers
was completed that night.  The one that had been rusting away
for years, left abandoned, was the one that the first group would
take.  The second one that Bill and Graye had brought back
from the city would transport the second group.  And if either
of them failed to function, we always had our legs.

On our last night in Eden
we feasted.  At least a starvation feast.  Food never
tasted so wonderful as I helped myself to two rolls, a heaping
scoop of canned corn and a baked potato.  The thought to share
my portions with Sarah flashed through my mind.  Then I
remembered.

I glanced down the table
at Avian who sat talking hurriedly with Victoria, pointing at
something in the book that was laid on the table before them. 
Not that it truly mattered, but her status and usability in Eden
would be greatly increased if we ever all actually made it
south.  She was going from seamstress to the other
doctor.

The thought that that
would free up Avian crossed my mind and the smallest of a smile
tugged at my lips.

West sat next to me,
wolfing down his food faster than he could chew it.  I
chuckled, shaking my head at him.

“
What?” he said around a
mouthful of bread.  “I’m starving!”

“
I know,” I said with a
chuckle again.

“
You going to finish
yours?” he said, eying the remains on my plate.

“
Yes,” I said as I raised
my eyebrows at him.  “I intend to finish every
bite.”

He chuckled then. 
Underneath the table he gave my knee a small squeeze.  My
flesh tingled when he took his hand away.

We finished packing most
everything that night.  The members of the second group had to
open their tents up to those in the first since everything had been
loaded into the truck.  I was glad I had watch duty that
night; I wouldn’t have known how to handle that awkward
situation.

I looked out over the
tents that night.  I realized that this place we were staying
wasn’t Eden.  Eden was wherever these people were, Eden was
them.  In this hellish world we had created our own
utopia.  I wondered if there were any other places like this
that existed.  It didn’t sound like it from what I had heard
others say.  How had I been so lucky to have come
here?

Sarah wouldn’t have called
it luck.  To her it would have been fate.  Maybe it
was.

But Eden would be breaking
up in the morning.  Would it ever be fully put back together
again?  What were our numbers going to be like if it
did?  Who would be lost along the way? 

I felt immensely relieved
that we would finally be leaving.  The event had loomed over
us like a lightning cloud.  We were all just waiting for it to
strike.  It would be nice to finally get it over
with.

I made a resolution that
night.  By the time we reached our new location, if we reached
it, I would have to have made my choice.  Avian or West. 
I would pick or I wouldn’t let myself have either of them.  We
couldn’t continue like this.  I couldn’t live with myself
going on the way I was.  And I didn’t even know if Avian still
felt the same way.