Eden (22 page)

They could still blow me
apart though.

EIGHTEEN

My breathing came in
steady rhythm as my bare feet beat against the gravel.  I
checked my surroundings as I ran.  The houses were starting to
fall away and trees rose up around me.  The sound of another
set of feet came up after me.

I brushed leaves out of my
tangled hair as I ducked into the bushes.  It felt strange to
have it so long, but I wasn’t sure why.

My feet were agile as I
leapt over a fallen tree and crashed through the undergrowth. 
My pursuer continued to chase after me.

I analyzed the terrain
before me, picking out the best path.  My hesitation was too
long though.  The next second I was tackled to the
ground.

All I saw after that was
red and gleaming metal parts.

The dream haunted me as I
joined the others in the gardens the next afternoon.  I’d
never had that one before. 

Red.

There had been so much
red.

“
Set this in there, will
you?” Sarah said as she extended a cucumber toward me.  I
grabbed it from her and set it in the basket at my feet.

The heat was getting
intense, made all the worse by the clouds that were coming
in.  The air was heavy with humidity.  I heard several
people begging for it to rain.

With summer midway over,
the garden was producing well.  This was our second round of
early harvesting.  There was an abundance of squash, peas,
beans, cucumbers, and other delicious vegetables.  The kitchen
crew had been busy canning the last week or so.  Our new
cellar was getting its shelves filled quickly.

“
Do you know what it is
Avian’s been working on lately?” Sarah asked as she handed me
another cucumber.  “He’s been obsessed, but he won’t tell me
what it is he’s doing.”

Avian and I had both
agreed to keep our discoveries quiet.  Until we understood
what it was we were looking at, we didn’t want to give anyone false
hope.

“
Why does this project
seem so strange?” I diverted.  “He gets into different
projects sometimes.”

“
I don’t know.  He’s
just being so secretive.  And he’s been weird lately.  I
don’t know how to describe it.”

I did.  Desperate
hope filled with total inept ability.

“
I wouldn’t worry about
him,” I said as I reached for the next vegetable she handed
me.  It slipped through Sarah’s fingers before I grabbed
it.

Sarah cursed under her
breath, shaking her hand.

“
Are you alright?” I asked
as I bent and picked it up off the ground.

“
Yeah,” she said as she
shook her head and went back to work.

“
You sure?”

“
I’m fine!” she snapped at
me.

I watched her closely
after that.  I didn’t understand what the fact that Sarah
seemed to be having a hard time keeping her grip on things
meant. 

That evening, I watched as
the one of the afternoon scouting groups arrived back at
camp.  Among them was West, who wouldn’t even look me in the
eye as he grabbed a bowl of soup and headed straight for his
tent. 

Good.  I didn’t want
to talk to him either.

I didn’t know if I would
ever be able to trust him again.

That night as I went up
the tower for watch duty, Avian followed me.  I should have
protested.  I had meant it when I told him he was too
distracting.  I thought I could control myself though, as long
as I kept him at arm’s length.

“
I recognize these things
here,” Avian said as he sat on the bench.  I leaned over the
page, feigning interest.  I
was
interested; it just didn’t mean
anything to me.  “These things here could be found at any
hardware store.  Most of these,” he said, pointing to
something else.  “Could be found in just about any lab. 
But these,” he said, indicating another few things.  “I’m not
even sure what they are.”

My eyes scanned the
trees.  I had that feeling again.

“
There’s got to be someone
out there who knows what it is,” I said distractedly.

“
Have you talked to West
about this yet?”

I shook my head.  “I
don’t think I can face him without doing something stupid
again.”

“
He may know what we’re
looking at,” Avian said quietly.  “We should talk to
him.”

“
Feel free,” I said as I
paced.

“
I’m serious, Eve. 
He might know something.  I think he’s a lot smarter than any
of us realize.  What he said about the infection having been
designed to spread.  It makes sense.  He’s bound to have
picked up on a lot of things from his family.”

“
He was thirteen when
everything happened.  I doubt he learned too much about
electro physics, or whatever.”

“
Don’t underestimate
inherited intelligence.  I think we should talk to
him.”

“
Fine,” I sighed.  I
fought back the urge to send Avian back to his tent.  It was
setting me on edge to have him talking at me.  I needed to be
on full alert.

Eventually Avian fell
asleep on the bench, the notebook balanced on his chest.  I
sighed in relief when I heard his heavy breathing.  Finally,
silence.

The air felt thick as the
clouds kept building.  There was a charge running through the
atmosphere, like the sky was ready to split apart at any
moment. 

Two hours before dawn
would have broken, the thing I had been waiting for finally
happened.

The sound of a chopper
buzzed through the air.  A few moments later I picked up on
the sound of another.  I barely made out the tiny black dots
in the sky to the west of Eden.

I cursed under my
breath.  They were slowing down in their approach.

Twenty seconds later, the
glow of a stream of fire blazed through the pre-dawn
sky.

“
NO!” I screamed, true
horror filling me for the first time.

Avian jerked awake as the
second scream leapt from my throat.  His eyes followed my line
of sight.

Both helicopters had fire
billowing out from them. 

They were burning the
gardens.

“
Gabriel!” Avian bellowed
as he leapt down the ladder and started sprinting through
Eden.  I leapt down after him, heading directly to the tree
line.

I had to be careful not to
crash into any trees in the nearly nonexistent light as I plowed
through the woods.  I pulled my pack in front of me, digging
though it for more ammunition, putting it into a side
pocket.

The glow of the flames
told me I was getting close.  It took me a while to realize
the sound of the helicopters had disappeared.

I was about fifty yards
away when it came running at me.  A nearly all metal Fallen
leapt at me from the trees.  I pulled my gun and blasted its
head open before it got within ten feet of me.

I had just gotten to the
fence line when another tackled me, its hands closing around my
throat.  I rolled, coming on top of it.  Getting my hands
free, I attacked its head with my clenched fists.  As soon as
the outer metal was broken I started pulling at wires and
gears.  Its form was still a few seconds later.  I pried
its dead hands away from my throat.

Finally, I turned back to
the fence, my fingers twining in the chinks.  I could only
stand there and watch as the rows of peas, spinach, tomatoes, and
pretty much everything else, burned.

Shouts started racing
toward me in the chaos the early morning had become.  There
was nothing we could do but stand at the fence and watch everything
we had worked for for the last five years burn.

Maybe there was a God out
there.  The sky finally couldn’t hold any more pressure and
the rain started to fall.  As I watched the fires sizzle out,
a hand slipped into mine.  I didn’t even have the will to turn
and see who it was.  It felt like nothing mattered
anymore.

We were finally done
for.

NINETEEN

Even though no one had
died, the feeling of death and despair hung in the air like a
ghost. 

We had salvaged what we
could out of the garden.  Two tomato plants, half a row of
squash, a small patch of potatoes, and one broccoli plant was all
that had survived.  The amount of food it would eventually
produce would feed everyone in Eden for less than a
week.

Inventory of our stores
were immediately taken.  We had enough to last about four
months if we all went on starvation diets.  We’d been counting
on a good fall harvest.

Two days after the burn I
had taken Bill with me on scouting duty.  He got the truck to
start at the cabin I had found and together we filled the back with
everything that had been in the storage room beneath the
house.  That would buy us another month or so if we were
careful.  Nearly everyone cried when we drove the truck back
through the forest and showed them the supplies.  I sensed
Bill was harboring hard feelings toward me for not telling everyone
about what I had found before.  How could I have forgotten
about something so important until now?

Three weeks after the
burn, I came back from my morning scouting duty, joining the others
for dinner.  We were each given a roll and half a scoop of
canned corn.  After receiving my plate, I sat next to Sarah,
watching my movements as I did.  My skin was turning a light
shade of pink under my normally tanned tone.  The sun had been
brutal the last few days.

“
You should go see Avian
about that,” Sarah said as she looked at my arm that rested next to
her pale white one.  “He has some aloe he could put on
it.”

“
I’m fine,” I said as I
tore a small piece off of my roll.  “I’m sure someone will
need it more than me.”

Sarah nodded her head, not
wanting to argue with me.  She scooped her corn into her spoon
and raised it to her lips with a shaking hand.  I looked at
her closely as she chewed the bite carefully.

Sarah looked like a
skeleton.  She had started dropping weight even before the
burn happened, and then when we all went on starvation rations, she
started declining even more rapidly.  She was frightening to
look at now, I didn’t want to know how she would look in a few more
weeks, a few months from now.

“
I’m not very hungry,” I
said as I picked my plate up and scooped my corn onto her
hers.  I broke half of my roll off and set it there as
well.  “Why don’t you have mine?”

“
Eve,” she said as she
looked at me with tired eyes.  “You have to eat
too.”

“
I’m not hungry,” I said
again as I stuffed what was left of my roll into my mouth.  As
I stood, my stomach growled.  Before Sarah could protest
further, I walked toward the medical tent.  Just as I was
about to step inside, West stepped out, nearly crashing into
me.  My eyes dropped to the tear in his shirt.  His
sleeve was soaked in blood and I saw fresh stitches in his
arm.

“
You alright?” I asked
stiffly.  West and I still had not talked much since I had
attacked him.

“
Fine,” he said
shortly.  “I just fell.”  He walked away without saying
anything else.

A strange rock seemed to
form in the pit of my stomach as I swallowed hard and stepped
inside.

“
Hi,” Avian said as he
looked up at me with a small smile.  He pulled off a pair of
bloodied latex gloves.

“
I have an hour or so,” I
said as I sat on a stump, pulling my knees to my chest and resting
my arms on them.

“
You should be sleeping,”
he said as he busied himself with cleaning up.  “You’re going
to over work yourself.”

“
I’m not sure that’s
possible.”

“
Of course it is,” he said
as he finished up and sat across his examination table from
me.  “You’re still human.  Look how much weight you’ve
dropped already.” 

I didn’t look, but I knew
Sarah wasn’t the only one who had dropped some.  We all
had.

“
Are you still eating your
rations?” he asked me.

“
Yes,” I lied. 
Somehow I sensed Avian knew I wasn’t telling the truth.

He knew better than to
argue with me though, so he just stood and bent down to a wooden
box that sat on the floor.  Being careful, he pulled the CDU
out and set it on the table.  He grabbed West’s notebook and
opened it to the last pages.

Over the last few weeks,
Avian and I had been pulling the CDU apart, piece by piece. 
We had been matching parts to those we found in the notebook,
making our own notes as we went along.  We were always
obsessively careful to make sure we put it back together exactly
the way it had been before.  We tested it every time after
reassembly on Avian.  He flinched from the shock of the
electricity every time. 

Today we were looking at
its core.