Eden (32 page)

“
I know,” he said as his
eyes fell to the ground.  “Just instinct, I guess.”

He stood there with me for
a while, our eyes watching the rain as it fell, our feet getting
soaked as it did.

“
Did you say something to
West?” he asked.  “He’s acting kind of… put out.”

I swallowed my bite before
answering.  “I told him that I knew he had lied to me
earlier.  I also pointed out the fact that I only have these
blackouts when I’m around him.”

“
Really?”

I nodded.  “The first
time was when I choked him.  It was like I didn’t know what I
was doing.”

“
And then when you
tripped,” Avian said, his eyes staring out over the desert. 
“You two had been talking.  I’ve never see you stumble
before.”

I nodded again.  “And
then yesterday.”

“
Why do you think that
is?” he asked.

“
I don’t know,” I said as
I shook my head.

“
I’m going to be honest
here, all feelings aside, Eve.  I’m worried about you being
close to him.  If being around him makes you lose control of
yourself, it’s a danger to us all.  We can’t afford to have
you gone, to have you check-out, even if you don’t mean to. 
And we can’t afford to have you turn on us.”

“
I wouldn’t do that,” I
defended as I glared at him.

“
I know you wouldn’t,”
Avian said as he looked at me.  “But what if you don’t have a
choice?  I mean, you didn’t want to strangle West, did
you?”

“
Of course not,” I
said.  “I mean I was mad at him but I would never actually
do
that
.”

“
That’s what I mean. 
If you don’t have control over this it’s dangerous for us all for
you to be around him.”

The rain picked up in
intensity, if that was even possible.  “He infuriates me,” I
said quietly, feeling my frustration pick up inside of me.  “I
think he just likes to make me mad sometimes.  And I don’t
know that I can ever trust him.  He keeps too many
secrets.

“
But he also…” I trailed
off, instantly wishing I could erase my words.

“
But he also woke
something up inside of you,” Avian filled in for me, his voice
quiet.

My eyes dropped to the
ground and I nodded.  “I won’t lie to you, Avian,” I
whispered.  “He did and I can’t say I regret the fact that he
did.”

Avian’s hand came to my
cheek, making me look at him.  “I wish it had been me that had
woken you up.  I won’t say that I’m not jealous over what he
makes you feel.  But I’m glad you are feeling things.  It
gave me hope.  You were finally seeing me as well.”

My chest swelled again at
his words.  My eyes dropped to his lips, remembering what it
had felt like to press mine to his.  The magnetic pull inside
of me to lean just a little closer would have been impossible to
fight if it hadn’t been for the movement I saw out of the corner of
my eye.

“
Stop right there!” I
shouted as I took five steps forward, my shotgun level to my
eyes.

Thirty yards away, two
figures stopped in their tracks, their hands held up.

“
Please,” a female voice
called through the rain.  “We just need something to
eat.  We’ve been lost in this desert for days.”

I walked toward them, gun
in hand, Avian following me, his own handgun held steady.  As
the figures became clearer, I realized it was a man and a woman,
looking to be in their late thirties. 

“
Please,” the man
said.  “We mean you no harm.  We just need something to
eat.  If you can spare anything.”

“
Where’d you come from?”
Avian demanded, his gun pointed right at the man’s
chest.

“
Back from the southeast,”
the man said.  “We’ve been running for almost a year
now.”

I glanced at Avian, unsure
of what to do.  Part of me felt they were harmless but trust
wasn’t something to just give these days.  He looked over at
me as well and I knew what he was about to say.

“
Come with us,” he
said. 

We walked behind them,
their hands held behind their backs where we could see them. 
I looked down at their feet, their shoes were held together with
strips of material and lengths of rope.  Their clothes were
torn and ragged looking.

We led them to one of the
tents.  Morgan and Eli were inside resting and jumped at the
sight of the strangers.  “Who are they?” Morgan’s husband
demanded as he put himself between the newcomers and his
wife.

“
We’re about to find out,”
Avian said as he walked back to the truck while I kept an eye on
them.  A minute later Avian walked back in, the CDU in
hand.

“
What are you going to do
with that?” the woman asked, eyeing it warily.

“
Just make sure you’re
really human,” I said.

Avian made one swipe down
the woman’s bare arm, water rolling off of her to the floor of the
tent.

“
What are you doing?” she
jumped, huddling back into the man.

“
This puts out an
electrical current.  Being this soaked will make it much more
intense,” Avian explained as he met their eyes.  With
hesitancy, she let him wipe her arm more.  The man tried
drying his own arm.

They didn’t fight us as
Avian touched the device to their still damp skin, which told us
there that they were organic.  Once sure they weren’t out to
destroy us, we all sat, finally inside from the rain.  Tuck
had been notified I had gone inside and took over full
watch. 

“
Why are you coming out
here from the east?” Avian asked.

“
Things are bad back
east,” the woman started.  “There is hardly anyone left. 
The Hunters have gotten so aggressive.  It wasn’t safe
anywhere.  We had no choice but to come west.”

“
It took us a year to
figure out what was happening any way,” the man said, his eyes wild
with recollection.  “It’s amazing we stayed alive.”

“
What do you mean?” I
asked.

The two of them exchanged
a look, a million memories between them.  “We were on a year
long sailing study,” the man started.  “That’s how we
met.  We were both working for the university, doing marine
studies.  There were six of us on the sailboat.  We
hadn’t been into port in nearly six months, hadn’t seen another
human being beside the six of us in that long
either. 

“
We came in for supplies
only to find the ocean-side town abandoned.  Or so we
thought.”

“
We went to look for
food,” the woman said, her eyes haunted.  “That’s when we saw
them, sleeping in the buildings.  It was dark but we saw them,
hundreds of them.  Just staring out at nothing.  We
didn’t know what had happened but we knew something was very
wrong.”

“
We split into groups,”
the man said.  “We hid ourselves as best we could.  Got
supplies at night.  We did okay for a few years but they
started pushing further and further into the country.  We
didn’t think it was safe anymore to stay.  So we started
walking.”

“
That was a year ago,” the
woman said hoarsely.  “We’ve been running ever
since.”

“
But you’re still alive,”
Avian said quietly.  “That’s the part that really
matters.”

“
What are your names?” I
asked, finally relaxing my shotgun.

“
Tess,” the woman
said.  “And this is Van.”

“
I’m Avian,” he
said.  “This is Eve, that’s Morgan and Eli.”

“
Thank you for giving us
shelter,” Van said as he put his arm around Tess.  “We will be
out of your way soon.”

“
You’re welcome to travel
with us,” Avian said.  I stiffened at his hasty
acceptance.  “We are headed southwest before the winter
comes.  We plan to find somewhere safe and set up camp
again.  Ours was just destroyed.  The rest of our group
is coming later.”

“
How many of you are
there?” Tess asked.

“
Here now,
seventeen.  There are another seventeen that will
follow.  With the two of you that will bring us up to
thirty-six members of Eden.”

“
Eden,” Tess said, a hint
of a smile in the corner of her lips.  “We would love to be
members of Eden.”

Avian nodded, a smile on
his own lips, as he placed his hand on her knee for just a
moment.  He then stood and looked at me, his eyes reflecting
the private moments we had shared before they had been
broken. 

We fed Tess and Van as
much as we could.  Our food supplies had been limited before
and adding two people to the mix was going to strain us all the
further.  But we couldn’t just let them wander in the desert
and starve.  We were all more human than that.

I got some sleep, lying
next to Morgan as she napped, Tess dropping to sleep almost as soon
as we finished talking.  I dreamed dreams that would have made
me blush during the day with alternating fantasies of West and
Avian.

When I woke up that
evening the rain had still not let up.  The clouds were still
dumping on us and Tuck told us that unless it let up soon there was
no way we were going to be able to drive that night.  The
windshield wipers didn’t work anymore.  Avian was also worried
everyone would catch sick if they sat out in the rain on the
trailer all night.

Everyone settled down in
one tent or another that night, each silently grateful to be able
to sleep on stationary ground after two nights on the
trailer.  I watched as West went to one tent, Avian to
another.  I stationed myself just outside one of the tents
they hadn’t chosen, volunteering as usual, to keep night
watch.

As those behind me started
breathing the deep breath of sleep, I wondered what was going to
happen in our near future.  I had told myself that I was going
to make a decision by the time we got to our destination, where
ever that was going to be.  Avian had said we were only two,
maybe three solid nights drives away now.  After that it was
just a matter of finding a place that was safe and secluded. 
And that had water.

Was I going to be able to
make a decision in just a few short days?  What was going to
happen once I had decided?

I was going to have to
forever live knowing how I had hurt one of them.  What would
happen if I chose West?  Could I stand to hurt Avian? 
Avian would never leave those in Eden, he loved them too much to do
that.  And he knew they needed him.  I would have to see
the pain I had caused him on his face every day.

But what if I chose
Avian?  I wasn’t so sure West could stick around, already
feeling like an outsider who no one trusted.  Could I turn out
the only tie I had to my past?

And what was it even like
to be in a relationship?  I had watched Gabriel and Leah,
Morgan and Eli.  Commitment meant sharing a tent every night,
meant always having someone to eat with at meals, meant small
displays of affection.  People like them told each other those
three special words I had heard so much about.

I had a hard time
imagining myself telling anyone I loved them.  Was it even
happening for me?  Was I falling in love?

Why did being human have
to be so hard?

TWENTY-EIGHT

The rain let up an hour
before dawn and by the time the sun came up nearly all the moisture
on the ground had dried up to little more than tiny
puddles.

I met each of their eyes
as they came out of their tents.  Knowing I couldn’t deal with
all my confusing thoughts any more that day, I ducked into one of
the tents and pretended I was asleep until I really was.

At first I thought it was
a dream, the arguing voices I heard.  They spoke in hushed
tones but their voices were harsh and biting.

“
Do you
want
to be putting
everyone in danger?”  As my brain woke I realized it was
Avian’s voice I was hearing.

“
How do you know it’s
me?”  It was West’s voice that responded, no surprise. 
“There’s all sorts of programing in her brain.  Who knows what
she’s capable of?  How she could evolve?”

“
Because the only time it
happens is when she’s with you!” Avian nearly shouted.  “You
get her so worked up it sends her into overload and she can’t
handle it!”

“
You don’t know what
you’re talking about,” West said coldly.  “You just want me
out of the picture.”

“
I’m not going to lie and
say I don’t wish you weren’t here,” Avian said, just a little more
calmly.  “But this isn’t about that.  Whatever you’re
doing to her is putting us all in danger.  You should see that
the most clearly, she attacked you!”

“
We’ll get this figured
out,” West said through clenched teeth.  “It’s not like she’s
been trying to keep herself away from me all the time.  Almost
every move has been made by her.”

“
Maybe so,” Avian said
through clenched teeth.  “But she told me herself that she
doesn’t think she can ever trust you.  How can you expect to
have a relationship when trust is absent?”