Eden (8 page)

I grabbed our food and
made a hasty retreat back to the tent.  I found Avian staring
at Sarah’s still form, his brow furrowed.

“
Eat something,” I
commanded as I handed him the warm food.

“
Thank you,” he said as he
looked up at me briefly, accepting the bowl and the rolls. 
For a brief moment, I saw the twenty-one-year-old young man who had
fled for his life again with fear in his eyes, not knowing what to
do.

Avian had been a bright
student in school.  He had skipped grades and eventually got a
scholarship to an accelerated private school.  He had
graduated high school at the age of fifteen and received his
bachelor degree in pre-med by the time he was eighteen. 
Scholarships had been offered but it wasn’t going to be enough to
pay the hefty price of medical school.  Just months after he
turned eighteen, Avian joined the Army with the offer that they
would pay for all of his medical school.  Along with his
military training, Avian had been put into an accelerated medical
program specific for Army and survival training.

But only two and a half
years into his training, he noticed how everyone was acting
strange.  The world fell apart and Avian took what knowledge
he had gained and fled with his sister and cousin into the
mountains.

I picked at my food, not
feeling like eating in the least.  My stomach was a hard knot
and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Sarah.  I was sure at
any minute she would open her eyes and complain about having to lay
on the hard wooden table.

After we both pretended
like we had eaten something, we watched her in silence.  I was
getting anxious.  I didn’t know how to handle just
sitting.  I debated internally what I could do that was close
by, so that if I needed to, I could run right back in.  Not
that I could really do anything to help Avian.  When it came
to the body, I was just glad mine functioned.  I didn’t know
how to fix it.

I was saved from idleness
in a horrifying way.

Sarah suddenly started
shaking violently.  Her arms flailed and her legs
spasmed.  We both sprang to our feet, catching her just a
fraction of a second before she fell of the table.

“
She’s having a seizure!”
Avian said, panicked.

“
What do we do?” I
screamed.

“
Help me roll her onto her
side,” he shouted as he ducked out of the way of her thrashing
arm.  With difficulty we maneuvered her onto her side,
balancing her so she wouldn’t shake her way off.

“
That’s it?” I asked, my
voice struggling to come out.

“
That’s it,” Avian said
quietly, looking at me with fear in his eyes again.

The seizure lasted for
just over a minute.  Her limbs continued to swing violently,
her arm beating against Avian’s side so hard I knew he would be
bruised in a few hours.  I could only stare at her for a
moment when it was finally over, horror filling me.

Avian sank onto his seat
again.  His head dropped into his hands, rubbing his scalp
with force.  I realized then that he didn’t know
what
was wrong with
Sarah.  I felt angry with him for a moment.  Why didn’t
he know what to do?  He always knew what to do with everyone
else.  Why couldn’t he save his sister?

And then I felt my own
fear double.  This was his sister.  Avian had already
lost his cousin.  Maybe he was about to lose his sister
too.  The only family he had left in this world.

We paced around the tent,
each pretending to do something productive.  I rearranged the
plastic aprons used for operating several times.  He cleaned
his tools till they shone. 

We were both startled by
the sound of Sarah coughing.  We jumped to her side, Avian
grabbing one of her hands in his.

“
Mum… ahh,” she tried to
speak, her eyes struggling to open.

“
We’re here Sarah, me and
Eve,” Avian spoke quietly as he pushed the hair back from her face
with his free hand.  “We’re here.”

She gave a soft sound of
acknowledgment before her eyes closed fully and she fell
asleep.  Or into unconsciousness, I wasn’t sure
which.

Avian’s body slouched as
he stood next to me, his shoulder brushing mine.  His hand
fell away from her face.  As it dropped to his side, his hand
brushed mine.  His fingers stretched out toward my own,
curling around them till our fingers were intertwined
securely.

My eyes shifted to our
hands, my chest suddenly feeling strange.  I wasn’t sure what
it was feeling.  It was almost like a bunch of bees were
buzzing inside my chest, making my breaths come in shallower
swallows.  And yet, at the same time, I felt like I should
pull my hand away.  People didn’t touch me, I didn’t touch
people.

But I didn’t.  I left
my hand in Avian’s.  The feeling of the bees buzzing in my
chest didn’t feel too bad.  In fact, it felt kind of
good.

SEVEN

We waited.  And
waited.

Sarah’s condition didn’t
improve.  She continued to have the seizures and only became
conscious once more after the day Avian held my hand.  She had
started coughing in her sleep, so violently she started
choking.  On the second day we had to use another of the
shots.  After four days of watching Sarah waste away, Avian
used his last one. 

We were going to need
more.

As if Sarah’s illness
wasn’t enough, there was a lot of anxiety flowing through
Eden.  A Hunter had been spotted twenty miles away and a
helicopter had been heard, though not seen.  We needed to move
camp but Avian begged them to wait.  He didn’t dare move Sarah
in her current condition, especially since he was out of the
adrenaline.

Camp was quiet as I rose
and strapped my pack to my back.  There was barely even enough
light to see by as I pulled my boots on.  I bit my lower lip
as I pulled the shiny silver handgun from under my cot and tucked
it under my belt.  I pulled the box of ammunition out as well,
dumping a heaping handful into the side pocket of my
pants.

I surveyed the tent
carefully, making sure there was nothing I was going to leave
behind that I would need later. 

Last night had been one of
panic.  Sarah had started coughing again so violently it left
traces of blood on her lips when she finally stopped.  As I
helped Avian, Bill had come into the medical tent informing us that
there were now two Hunters that had been spotted.  They were
getting closer.  Gabriel was ordering everyone to pack
up.  Eden was to move in two days.  Those who could leave
sooner were encouraged to do so.

“
We can’t move her,” Avian
said, panicked.  “She won’t make the trip.”

“
You don’t have a choice,”
Bill said quietly.  Even though I knew he felt for Avian and
Sarah, he would obey Gabriel’s orders.  “If we stay here,
we’ll all die.”

Avian hung his head, his
hands braced on the table.

“
If Sarah had the right
medicine, would she be okay?” I asked as I placed a hand on his
shoulder in an attempt to comfort him.  I felt awkward. 
I wasn’t good at that kind of thing.

“
She’d stand a
chance.  But it’s all gone.  I don’t have anything
left.”

So there I was, walking
out of my tent, ready to take the two day journey to the city by
myself.  I wasn’t going to let Sarah die.  It was
pointless to ask for Gabriel’s permission to go on a raid, not with
Hunters in the area.  Besides, I didn’t need his permission,
he wasn’t king.

I had just gotten to the
outskirts of the tents when I heard the sound of fabric being
rustled.  I turned and looked back down the row of tents and
saw West stepping out of his, his eyes locked onto me.

I briefly considered
bolting into the woods.  I couldn’t afford to lose time
now.  Dealing with West, trying to convince him not to rat me
out to Gabriel or Avian would delay me too long.

Yet there I was, frozen as
I watched him duck back into his tent then reemerge a few moments
later with his own pack.  He was at my side before I even
realized what he was intending to do.

“
Let’s go,” he said
quietly as he looked away from me into the woods.

We jogged through the
trees silently for nearly an hour as the sun crawled up into the
sky.  I had to remind myself frequently to keep my pace
slower.  West was in good shape and he was by no means slow,
but few people were able to keep up with what was my normal
pace.  But then I knew he was capable of outrunning me; he had
done it before.

We came to a stream and
slowed.  I was about to barrel right through it when West
noticed a tree that had fallen partially over.  There was a
large boulder close enough to the end of the tree and the other
side that we could jump.

As we got to the other
side we both slowed our pace to a swift walk.

“
Why did you come with
me?” I finally asked.  “You don’t even know where I’m
going.”

“
I figured it must be
important if you were willing to head into the woods by yourself
with Hunters in the area,” he said as he glanced at me.  “I
felt like I needed to do something, even if I’m not sure where I’m
going.”

“
I’m going to the
city.  There’s a few pharmacies that should have the
medication Sarah needs,” I said as I jumped over a tree that had
fallen across our path.  “This is going to be really
dangerous.”

“
I know,” he said as he
jumped over after me.  “She’s really important to you, isn’t
she?” West asked.  “Both of them are.”

I nodded.  “Sarah has
been like my big sister.  She’s taken care of me.”  I
paused as I was about to say something about Avian.  I wasn’t
sure what exactly Avian was to me anymore.  He would always be
family in a way, everyone in Eden was, but now there were new
feelings mixed in.  After he had held my hand, I felt
strange.  In a way I wished he had never done it and yet at
the same time I kept hoping he would do it again.

“
They must mean a lot to
you if you’re willing to risk your life and take off to the city by
yourself,” he said.

“
But I’m not by myself,” I
clarified as I glanced over at him for a brief second.  He
gave a faint smile in my direction.

We stopped briefly at
mid-day to drink from a stream that looked clean and I shared some
of the food rations I had taken the night before.  We were
going to have to be careful.  I had only taken enough for
myself.  Now it was going to have to keep the two of us going
for the next five days.  Maybe we’d get lucky and find
something non-perishable in the city.

The sun was hot as it
started toward the western horizon.  I actually had to remove
my jacket as sweat beaded in the small of my back.  I felt
hope though.  Spring was finally starting to warm up into
Summer.  This was exactly what the gardens needed.

I explained the layout of
the city to West as we walked.  There were certain hideout
spots we knew to be safe, places the Fallen didn’t know about, or
would never care to go.  There were three pharmacies in the
city, each on opposite ends.  It would take us nearly a full
day to get to all three,
if
there were no complications and we didn’t get
caught.  It was one thing going on a raid with four of us that
had experience with this kind of thing.  It was another going
by myself with someone who I knew almost nothing about, had no idea
how he would handle himself in a situation like this.

As the light faded away,
we found a place to make camp.  Traveling in the dark wasn’t
safe. 

I caught a decent-sized
rabbit and was lucky to find a large handful of wild, though not
nearly ripe, blackberries.  When I came back to our camp, I
found West had built a fire and slung a hammock high up in a
tree.

“
Where did you get that?”
I asked as I set to skinning and gutting the rabbit.

“
I found it in my old
camp.  Someone left it.  It will be a lot safer sleeping
up in that than it will be on the ground,” he said as I gave him
the rabbit.  He drove a narrow, sharp stick through it, then
set it over the fire to cook.

I gave a nod, pretending
like the fact that we were going to be sleeping right next to each
other didn’t make me uncomfortable.

It felt good to get food
in my system.  While none of us were starving, we had to be
careful over the winter to make sure our stores would last until
spring.  It was nice to get my share.  I licked my
fingers off and threw the bones as far as I could to keep the
wolves away.

The heat of the day faded
away and the chill of evening started to set in.  We both
huddled closer to the fire, palms raised to the flames.

“
What do you remember from
before the Fall?” I asked, my voice quiet. 

West glanced at my face
for a brief moment, taken off-guard by my sudden, very serious
question.

“
I lived with my father
and my grandfather.  My mother left when I was really
little.  My grandfather was a scientist, my dad was a
doctor.”