Eden (30 page)

“
Yeah,” I said quietly,
trying to push the memory of it away.  “Did you sleep
much?”

“
For a while.”

I lay there for a little
longer, listening as Avian breathed, the sound of everything that
was still okay in the world.  A part of me wanted to never
have to move again, to lay here until the sun died and time ceased
to exist or matter anymore.

“
We should probably get
going,” Avian said, always right about everything.  I nodded,
pulling myself up to my feet, then helping Avian to his own. 
He went to take a step back toward the group but before he could, I
slipped my hand into his.  I had been wanting to do that for
so long, but starving myself of it.

Avian looked down at me,
his eyes open and intense at the same time.  I brought our
hands up to my cheek then briefly pressed my lips into the back of
his hand.  Then I let go and walked back to the
group.

The sun died below the
horizon in the west, the temperature immediately dropping.  I
watched as Avian stacked some rocks at the base of another tree
where it would be obvious to see, the note he had written tucked
securely under the largest stone.  We all loaded onto the
trailer and for the first time, Tuck set out on level
ground.

“
It won’t go any faster
than about forty miles-per-hour,” Tuck called out the
window.

“
It’s a miracle that it
still runs at all,” Avian called back to him.  “Let’s just
pray that it will keep that pace.”

Tuck nodded, turning his
attention back to the level ground before him.  Those who
traveled with us had grabbed their blankets out of the back of the
truck and started arranging themselves to get more
comfortable.  It was cramped quarters but they used each other
as pillows, everyone suddenly getting much closer to one another
than they ever had before.

Avian sat at the front
passenger side of the trailer, rifle ready at any moment.  I
sat in the opposite corner in the back, watching the landscape as
it fell behind us.  West lay at my right, his head resting
against my thigh as he drifted off to sleep.

As far as I could tell,
all the others were asleep before we even got to the road.  It
seemed a shame.  To me, driving on a road was the first tie to
normal life I had ever had.

It wasn’t perfectly
smooth.  After not being taken care of for so many years it
had cracked and started to break down a bit.  But in a way it
felt like flying.  I knew Tuck had said we weren’t going very
fast but I had never moved this fast before.  Legs could only
carry me so fast, even my legs.  The way the wind whipped my
tied-back hair around my face was an experience I had never felt
before.  I closed my eyes for just a moment and imagined I
could smell the ocean as well.

The only sound that met my
ears was the wind around us, the grumble of the truck, and its
tires rubbing the road.  The truck’s one working headlight
created a tunnel of light before us that made me slightly
uneasy.  It felt like a beacon jumping up into the sky,
alerting our position. 

I reminded myself that
Fallen weren’t supposed to come out during the night.

Except for when they
burned gardens.

It wasn’t long before we
reached the outskirts of a small city.  My nerves pitched as
houses came into view.  Tuck pulled off the road and continued
through the fields.  I saw the shadow of buildings that
created the small city we had raided a few times before.  We
had only encountered a few Hunters there before but it was too
dangerous to risk driving through the city.  Even if it was
night.

As we got to the outskirts
we reconnected with the road and pulled into a gas
station.

Tuck pulled up to one of
the pumps and Avian jumped off the trailer, grabbing a hose and
started punching a few buttons.  Nothing happened.  Avian
started walking toward the back of the store, waving Tuck forward
with the truck.  I hopped off, jogging ahead to catch up with
Avian.  I kept my shotgun level to my eye, my finger on the
trigger.  I wasn’t going to be caught off guard if anything
woke up.

“
Here we go,” Avian
whispered, a bit of a smile forming on his lips.  He waved
Tuck over to a pipe that rose up out of the ground.  At the
top it had some sort of hand pump and a hose that ran off the side
of it.

I watched in fascination
as Avian opened a small round cover on the side of the truck. 
Tuck shut it off and stepped out, walking the length of the truck
back and forth to stretch his legs.  Avian put one end of the
hose in the hole in the side of the truck and started
pumping.

“
This is going to take a
while,” Avian huffed as he worked the stiff joints.  “Watch
the perimeter.”

I nodded once and walked
to the side of the store, checking to make sure it was clear. 
I snuck back around to the front of the store, still clear. 
My nerves tight, I crept up to the glass front door and peaked
inside.  It had been obviously raided and the shelves were
mostly barren but it was empty.  I still didn’t relax
though. 

I continued to pace the
perimeter of the building the entire ten minutes or so that it took
Avian to pump the truck full of gas.  As he finished he asked
me to wait with the truck while he ran inside to look for
something.  I didn’t like it but I wouldn’t leave them here
asleep and defenseless.

Less than two minutes
later Avian jogged back towards us, five blue bottles in his
hands.

“
What’s that?” I asked,
eyeing it warily.

“
It cleans the fuel,” he
whispered as he set three of them in the back of the truck and set
to pouring two of the bottles in with the gas.  “I don’t know
if any of it is still good, the fuel or the cleaner but I figure if
we’ve got anything of a chance we’ve got to try it.”

I nodded.  When Avian
was finished, he set the empty bottles on the ground.  He
motioned for the three of us to get back inside.  A few people
stirred as the truck was started back up but they were asleep by
the time we pulled back on the road and continued down
it.

“
We should be good for
another three hundred miles or so,” Avian said quietly. 
“Depending on what kind of mileage this thing still gets.  And
if it keeps running.”

I nodded again, watching
the darkness around us.  It was frustrating that I couldn’t
see anything.  I took a little comfort in the fact that Avian
could though.  He kept looking through his night vision scope
every few minutes.

West eased his head back
up onto my thigh, a soft snore letting me know just how asleep he
really was.  I tried to ignore him, remembering what had
happened earlier when we had just brushed shoulders.  My
vision was already black, I didn’t need my brain going black as
well.

I watched Avian for a
while.  He had been so strong these last few days.  He
had now lost his entire family and was the only remaining human in
his bloodline.  His parents had been infected early on, Tye,
his cousin but brother to us all, had fallen a few months ago,
unwitting at Avian’s bidding.  Sarah had been taken from him
by natural causes.  Now it was just him.

“
Is it harder now?” I
suddenly said quietly.  My fingers felt for the wings around
my throat.  “To keep going now that they’re all gone? 
Now that you’ve lost all your family?”

Avian looked at me, a
million words behind his eyes.  “I still have you,” he said
very quietly.  “As long as you’re still around I’ve got
something to keep fighting for.  And them as well,” he said as
he looked down at those sleeping around us.  “They’re my
family too.”

That swelling in my chest
started up again.  I both craved it and didn’t want it. 
It made me say stupid things.

“
Are you in love with
Victoria?”

Avian’s eyebrows knitted
together as he looked at me.  “What? 
Victoria?”

I could only nod.  My
face suddenly felt hot.

“
Victoria is a smart woman
and she is beautiful, but…  Why would you think that?”  I
was surprised to see that Avian’s face looked almost
hurt.

I suddenly wished I had
never said anything.  What had been the point of this
conversation?  “I just…  I didn’t…” I couldn’t find words
that wouldn’t make me want to jump off this trailer and hide myself
in a hole in the ground.

“
You’re jealous,” Avian
said with dawning in his voice.  A bit of a smile tugged on
his lips and his eyes suddenly seemed to light up.

“
Jealous,” I said, meaning
to form it as a question.  That was what Sarah had said I was
feeling.

“
It’s not a fun emotion,
is it?” he said as his face grew more serious, though a tight
lipped smile formed.  As he said it, he glanced down at
West.

“
No, it’s not,” I said
quietly, my eyes falling down to West’s sleeping form.  “I
haven’t been very fair, to either of you.”

“
This is all new to you,”
he said quietly.  “I can’t judge you too harshly.”

“
I’m going to figure this
out,” I said, my words hardening my resolve.  “I know I can’t
keep going on like this.  I will choose.”

Avian’s eyes lost their
light.  He gave a nod, his eyes dropping to the ground that
fell away behind us.

“
I’m sorry,” I
whispered.

“
Don’t be,” he said,
glancing at me.  “I know this shouldn’t work.”

“
Don’t say that,” I
suddenly said, more harshly than I meant to.  “None of that
other stuff matters.  This is about you and me, not about age
or social normality.  Society is dead.”

Avian only nodded as he
continued to watch the ground.

I might not have known
what love was but I was sure starting to understand what hate
was.  I was getting well practiced with myself.

TWENTY-SIX

I felt too exposed, too
open.  I suddenly missed the mountains, the trees.  Only
then did I realize just how much they had protected us.  Now
in the open desert, I wanted to get out from under the wide sky and
distant horizons as fast as possible.

The sun seemed almost
blinding as it gleamed against the sand.  Amazing how the
Earth could change so fast, in just the eight hours we had driven,
going from forest to stark desert.  We had pulled off the road
and into a patch of rocks and a plant Tuck had told me was called
cactus for the day.  There wasn’t anything else to hide us
from being seen.  It was poor camouflage but it was all we
were going to get.

A married couple set to
making breakfast, bottled pears and bread left over from the day
before.  I then realized why Avian had been so insistent on
getting so much water.  With every bite I took I felt like my
tongue was sticking to the top of my mouth.  I would have
guzzled down an entire gallon if I didn’t know how precious our
supplies were.

I helped to assemble three
of our tents.  Two were for anyone who was feeling overheated
to go inside to get out of the sun.  The other was for Tuck,
Avian, and I to get some sleep whenever we felt tired.  I was
too on edge to rest though.

We split into groups,
deciding it wasn’t safe for anyone to wander on their own.  I
had chosen West as my partner, dragging him with me to circle the
perimeter.

“
You sleep like the dead,
did you know that?” I said as my eyes scanned the endless
horizon.  It looked like waves were rising off the hot
clay.

“
Do I?” he said, a smile
trying to escape onto his lips.

“
Yeah,” I replied with a
chuckle.  “I think I could have slapped you across the face
and you wouldn’t have woken up.”

“
Hum,” was all he
responded.  My stomach suddenly felt cold as the thought that
maybe West had just been faking while Avian and I had talked last
night.  Had he heard our entire conversation? 

“
I kind of like this
heat,” West said as he dropped the subject mercifully. 
“There’s something, I don’t know, comforting about it.”

“
You mean suffocating,
right?”

“
No,” he chuckled. 
“I don’t know.  I just kind of like it.  I wouldn’t want
to deal with it all the time but it’s kind of a nice change. 
Dry.  Not like how it’s felt so humid all the time
lately.”

“
I’ll agree with you
there,” I said as I glanced back at the caravan.  Everything
looked blurred from this far away.  Maybe we would be better
hidden than I had thought.  They just looked like an extension
of the rock outcropping.

West sat on a large
boulder, patting the space beside him.  I took one more look
around before I joined him.  We sat together in awkward
silence for almost a full minute.

“
Why didn’t you tell any
of us that you had those notes?  They could save us
all.”  My habit of blurting was becoming worse.

West looked over at me,
his eyes hard to read.  “Because I didn’t understand it all,”
he finally said.  “I’m not sure what it all is but I do know
that the plans aren’t complete.  Whatever makes it work at the
core, the part that gives it enough power to do the pulse, is
missing.  My grandfather was infected before he could complete
the plans.