Eden (35 page)

My eyes then found
Avian.  His bottom lip was split.

I didn’t even have to ask
what had happened.  West had sent me into overload
again.  I’d blacked out.  Avian wasn’t too happy when he
found out.  They’d finally gotten physical.

I got up, feeling a little
strange still, and went to look for my tent in the back of the
truck.  It was then that I realized that it was already being
set up.  To my surprise it was Tuck who was assembling
it. 

“
Thank you,” I said as I
grabbed a pole and helped him.  “I can take care of
it.”

“
It’s no trouble,” he
said, his lips pulling into a small smile.

I tried to return it,
unsure if I had succeeded.  It felt strange working next to
him, I didn’t know him well.  Tuck had only been with us for
just over a year.  I wasn’t sure how he had come to join our
group.

“
Was it bad?” I asked him
quietly.

“
What?” he asked as he
started hammering a stake into the ground.

“
The fight between Avian
and West.”

Tuck gave the smallest of
chuckles.  “A few fists flew but it was over pretty
quick.  I reminded them that we didn’t have time for
squabbles.”

I just shook my head,
letting out a frustrated breath.  “I didn’t do anything did
I?  Nothing… I don’t know.”

“
Just zombie walked,” he
said as he stood and wiped his hands off on his pants.  When I
gave him a blank stare he continued.  “You just walked back to
the truck with West, loaded up with weapons.  But your eyes
were just…”

“
Blank,” I finished for
him.  “Was that all?”

He nodded.  “You just
sat on the trailer where we placed you, staring out into
nothing.”

My insides felt all
twisted up as I imagined what I must have looked like.  “Was
everyone afraid of me?”

He didn’t answer right
away.  “Some of them were a little concerned.  Avian kind
of chewed them out for it though.  He made a good point. 
You’ve protected everyone for the last five years, why would you
turn on us now?”

“
Thank you, Tuck,” I
said.  He just nodded and walked back toward his own
tent.

Feeling only slightly
better, I turned my attention to my surroundings.  It was
similar to our old Eden in that it was surrounded by trees. 
But these trees were bigger, taller, like they were older. 
And there was something that smelled different here.  It was
then that I remembered how close we were to the ocean.

I had the sudden burning
desire to see it.  But that would have to wait.

Around lunch time, Tess
walked up to me, a wary look on her face.

“
Why did you just agree to
their plan?” she asked, looking uncomfortable to be talking to
me.  “If you’re so afraid to go so close to the city, why
would you allow them to come here?  You know how dangerous
this is.”

I gave her a curious
look.  “I’m not afraid,” I said.  “It’s all of them I’m
worried about.  I will go where ever they do to keep them from
getting infected.”

“
So it’s true?” she half
whispered.  “That you can’t be infected?”

“
Yes,” I said as I
swallowed hard.  “I’ve been touched by Fallen, multiple
times.”

“
Why is that?”

I felt
uncomfortable.  I didn’t know this woman, didn’t know if I
could trust her.  “I just can’t.”

“
And that’s why you’re not
afraid,” she said, giving me an almost harsh look, and walked back
toward Van.

I didn’t like Tess very
much I decided then.  But at the same time, she had been
right.

I couldn’t avoid them any
longer.  I finally sought out Avian, finding him keeping watch
on our western perimeter, in the direction of the cities.  I
stood there, ten feet away, not even knowing what to say.  The
hate I felt for myself deepened as I saw the hurt there in Avian’s
eyes.  I wondered what West had said to Avian, and in that
moment I hated West as well.

“
We should get prepped to
leave tonight,” Avian mercifully broke the silence.  “We
should get as familiar with the route as we can.”

Even though Avian spoke of
plans, he didn’t move.  I nodded my head, unable to do
anything but stare in those infinitely blue eyes.

“
I’m sorry,” I finally
managed.

“
I don’t blame only you,”
he said as he slung his gun over his shoulder and started back
towards camp.  “West should understand the danger he’s putting
us all in.”

We walked back to camp in
silence. 

We found West and Tuck and
took the map back to the trailer.  Setting it down, we all
gathered around it.  “We’re here,” Avian said, pointing to a
spot next to an exact replica of the small lake.  “I think we
can take the truck this far,” he said has he pointed to another
spot.  “From there we’re going to have to walk.  I’m
guessing it’s about fifteen miles.  Even if everything goes
smooth and we don’t run into any Fallen, it’s going to take us
nearly all night to get there.  If we don’t find them by
morning we’re going to have to find somewhere to hide for the
day.”

“
This is insane, Avian,” I
said as I shook my head.  “There are going to be so many of
them.  This is like sticking your hand into the middle of a
beehive.”

“
But if the people that
are hiding in the city have put other messages out there, they must
watch for others,” West said.  “Maybe they have some form of
transportation they can take to scout.”

“
An electric vehicle would
be virtually silent,” Tuck said as he studied the map.  “If
they have electricity and can power one, they’re around.  They
aren’t as fast as a normal car but it should be fast enough to
outrun a Fallen.”

“
That may be,” Avian
said.  “But we can’t count on that.  Everyone we’re
leaving behind has to know that we may be gone more than just
tonight.  We may be gone for a while.”

“
And how long do they wait
till they have to assume we’re dead?” I said harshly.  “Then
what do they do?”

“
Survive,” Avian said as
he glared at me.  “As they’ve been doing for the last five
years.”

“
There’s one problem,
when, or if, we get to these other people,” West said as he rested
his hands on the trailer.  “If they’re smart they test any
newcomers, just to make sure they’re not Fallen.  If they test
Eve it’s going to kill her.”

“
That’s a good point,”
said Tuck, his eyebrows rising slightly.

“
I’ll deal with it when we
get there,” I said, shrugging that possibility off.  I was
still only about ten percent sure we would find anyone alive. 
“Did you want to talk about anything else?”

Avian shook his
head.  “I don’t think so.  I think we’re set, as long as
we are all ready to leave tonight.”

We each nodded our heads
that we were.  “Have any of you slept yet?” I asked
them.  Their pause told me they hadn’t.  “I’ll keep watch
since I’ve been sleeping for the last however many hours.  Or
whatever it was that I was doing.”

West gave me a little half
smile.  Avian glared at him.  They disbursed to their
tents.

Everyone must have been
tired after being up half the night.  A lot of that was
probably my fault.  It felt like a ghost camp, with only
myself and Eli outside of our tents.  He kept himself busy
whittling at a piece of wood.

I walked back over to the
truck, fighting the war that was raging inside of me. 
Actually there was more than one.  Eager for a distraction, I
set to unloading the rest of the supplies from the back of the
truck. 

It was then that I
realized the amount of food we had left was only going to last us
another month, at the best.  We had left as much as we could
with those back in Eden.  It was precautionary, in case more
of us were to be lost on this dangerous first journey, and their
truck had a bigger bed.  But unless they got here soon we were
going to have to either attempt a raid or start hunting.

It was a relief though, to
know we had an unlimited supply of water with the lake.  We
had already used one of the big blue barrels and had emptied all
the smaller containers.  On the third day in the desert, we
discovered a very slow leak in the second barrel.  We could
all be grateful for nature and that we wouldn’t die of
dehydration.

Even though we were
further south, the air felt cooler here.  The peak of summer
had passed and fall would be coming in the arriving weeks.  I
thought longingly of the harvest that would have been ready
soon.  The garden would have been overflowing with fresh
vegetables, the fruit trees heavy with their crop. 

I wondered then if we
would ever have a garden again.  I wasn’t so sure it would
ever be safe to set down roots like that again.

But it was hard to imagine
we could survive with a good quality of life without
one.

People started waking back
up around dinner time and those who knew what to do with food
prepared it for those who were lacking that know-how.  As we
finished eating, Avian told them our plans, told them not to expect
us to return sooner than a week or so.  As he said the words,
I felt like a deserter.  These were my people and I had to
protect them at all costs.  Now I was leaving them for who
knew how long.  Maybe forever.

We asked for a volunteer
and Morgan and Eli accepted the task of being in charge of making
sure things were run well.  Weapons were redistributed and
most everyone was educated on how to use them.  They seemed so
defenseless without our usual scouts.

But they’d survived this
long, they knew how to take care of themselves.

The four of us loaded our
minimal supplies and the majority of the weaponry into the back of
the truck.  We unhooked the trailer, every one of us grateful
that it had held it together for this long.  With quick
good-bye’s, we headed directly south.

Tuck sat in the cab by
himself as he worked his way through forest again.  The
tension was obvious in the back, between the three of us, but there
was a much more important task at hand than worrying about emotions
and feelings.

But I hadn’t forgotten
that I was supposed to have made a decision by now.  We’d
arrived at what might be our final destination and I hadn’t made up
my mind.

I felt unprepared as Avian
checked the map and we pulled over less than an hour after we had
left the rest of the group.  As the houses started to crop up,
we parked it next to a few other vehicles that had been long
abandoned.  We all hunted around for stones of any size and
stacked them up directly behind the truck.  A message to those
who might come looking for us.

Thankful for a nearly full
moon to see by, we set out at a jog, each in a hurry to get this
suicidal task over with.  I had to constantly remind myself to
slow down.  Not all of us were machines.

The houses seemed so
forlorn, their windows empty and hollow.  All of the families
that had once lived there now didn’t care about their upkeep,
didn’t laugh or tell stories within their walls.  The houses
were all just overgrown pieces of a dead history now.

When we had looked at the
map all I saw was city after city stacked together, crammed into
such a small space.  As we came into the center of the first
one, my blood chilled.  We slowed as we moved past the
buildings, Avian and Tuck’s eyes growing wide.

“
You were right,” Avian
breathed as he cautiously walked up to a building.  Dozens of
Fallen stared back out at us, their eyes inactive and empty. 
“They’re just standing there.”

“
They look like they’re
just waiting for something,” Tuck said, going nowhere near the
building.

“
Let’s not find out what
for,” I said as I started back down the cracked road.

We jogged for as long as
Tuck, Avian, and West could breathe for.  Tuck held his side
as we slowed, Avian’s breathing became heavy, and West struggled to
keep up.  I wondered what it would be like to feel physical
exhaustion.  At times I could be grateful for all the
enhancements I had received and developed.

I wasn’t sure how they
defined one city from the next.  It all just seemed like one
endless city that kept repeating over and over.  And
everywhere empty eyes watched us.

We had just turned a
corner when I stopped dead in my tracks, West plowing into me from
behind, Avian and Tuck nearly tripping over him.  The barrel
of a shotgun was pressed tightly to my chest.

THIRTY-ONE

“
Who are you?” a thickly
built man with graying hair demanded.  “How’d you get
here?”

“
We walked,” I started,
holding my hands up, despite the weaponry that hung all over my
body.  “We’ve traveled from the east and found your
sign.  We came looking, to see if there was  anyone still
alive.”

The man’s eyes grew wider
in awe.  He lowered his gun slightly.  Now it was just
pointed at my feet.  “We haven’t seen anyone else in well over
a year.  We weren’t sure there was still anyone
left.”