Eden's Root (23 page)

He reached out again and took her hand, wrapped it in both his hands, and put it to his chest. Fi’s heart stopped and she froze. Oh God. She knew that he must have felt her stiffen, because he released her hand with an odd sound.

Oh no, Fi thought, he’s embarrassed. He coughed and her thoughts raced as her heart seemed to restart in her chest. What could she say? How did he expect her to respond? She couldn’t tell him, “I’m sorry, I love you, but I don’t love-love you,” like they were in middle school. Why now? Why this? Suddenly her mind settled on a thought, a way to avoid the embarrassment.

“You’re right,” she whispered to him and she thought she heard him take a deep breath. No, no, she thought! That’s not what I meant. Quickly, she corrected his thoughts. “I mean about me being all business all the time.” She reached out and found his hand and squeezed it, but he stiffened at her touch.

“I’m sorry Sean, it’s not your fault.” She was pleading with him, begging him to understand, to forgive her.

He was her best friend, her closest ally. When she closed her eyes, she could still remember the feeling of his arms wrapped tightly around her at Luke’s funeral while she cried. If she sat near enough to him she could tell that it was him without even looking, the shifting of his body was so familiar, the noises he made when he was lost in thought even more so.

Even now, she could feel the connection that was always there…could feel his need to protect her hiding just beneath the surface of his words. And now everything in the world was turned upside down and she was protecting others. And Sean wanted to turn it around even more and Fi’s head whirled at the thought. Despite her love for him, she couldn’t give him what he wanted, but the thought of having a wall between them was unbearable. If she didn’t have Sean in this time of all times… A sob started to rise in her chest and she swallowed it. There had to be some way to make him understand. Just tell him the truth, the real truth, her mind whispered and she realized it was right. She took a deep breath and released his hand.

“Sean,
this
is all I can think about, this world, this place, this situation,” she said. In the darkness, her whisper was soft and sad. “I don’t sleep and even when I do, I dream of this. Believe me, I wish I could enjoy things,” she added. It was honest, she thought. Though he had probably earned more from her, it was all she could offer. Beside her she could hear him sigh and she felt him stand up. In the darkness her mind raced, worried that he’d been too hurt, too embarrassed. A light touch landed on her shoulder as he placed his hand there for just a moment.

“Thanks Fi,” he said gently. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He tiptoed away to find his sleeping bag. Fi breathed a sigh of relief. For now it seemed that Sean would let his thoughts go and let her focus on being ‘all business all the time’.

And though she would give anything for it to be different, that was the only way things could be. If she did have feelings for Sean, she doubted she would have been able to recognize them. In this hopeless place there was only one goal, one vision, one thought, one feeling…survival.

----------- Sean -----------

As he settled into his sleeping bag, Sean fell back with a heavy exhale of frustration. What the hell was he thinking? Of course she wasn’t going to just throw her arms around him and make out with him in the middle of all this…hell. But, he thought wistfully, he couldn’t help what he felt. He loved her. Completely and utterly. He knew that now. When she was in danger, he felt like he was going to die every second…and when she was happy and joked with him, he felt like his heart would melt. And when she flashed him that smile…his heart ached as he pictured her beautiful golden eyes squeezing into happy half-moons.

He rolled over and punched the ground through his sleeping bag and then immediately regretted it as a sharp pain shot through his knuckles. He suppressed a groan and then sighed as he rubbed his hand. She loved him too, he knew. Just…not in the same way. No matter how much it hurt, he could understand. The truth was that he didn’t know how or when his love for her changed. One day, it just did.

But love wasn’t the only thing that changed, he thought, resigned. It was nice of her to blame her lack of feelings on the world around them. He knew she was partly protecting his feelings, but to some extent, that had to be true. He used to think of her affectionately as ‘his Fi’, but when he watched her now he realized that she was never ‘his’ and that she was barely ‘Fi’.

At least, she was barely the Fi he had grown up knowing. She wasn’t the girl who thought longer about what to wear to school than when her homework was due. She wasn’t the girl who was so lost in her daydreams that she could also lose her keys three times in the same day. He took a deep breath as he felt the warning of tears. And she wasn’t the girl he’d held in his arms as she sobbed at her little brother’s funeral. Now she was somebody else. A warrior. And she didn’t need his arms around her any longer.

----------- Fi -----------

“I say we go check out that one in the distance,” Fi said, pointing at a low shape on the horizon, centered in the middle of mostly barren dirt fields. Sean peered into the distance at the farmhouse Fi had indicated.

“I guess so. I mean, the fact that it’s so far off the roads is great, even these roads,” he said, kicking at the dirt and gravel road that had brought them here. “On the one hand the house is really obvious because there is nothing around it,” he began as he weighed the pros and cons.

“But,” Fi said, skipping ahead toward the fields, “we can also see someone coming from really far away.” Sean bolted after her and grabbed her arm.

“Exactly” he said. Startled, Fi realized that Sean was right. They would have to wait for nightfall to approach. “You’re right Sean,” she said, her face appreciative. “As usual.” She smiled, patting his arm. Turning back to walk across the road to the forest, she gestured for him to follow her. “Let’s wait in the forest until nightfall.” Sean trotted to join her.

As was common for them whenever they explored together, the two would spend the daylight hours killing time. It was odd, Fi thought, that in the midst of this disaster what she often felt was boredom. It was hard to spend whole days just sitting around, unable to really go anywhere. They had chores and they chatted and played games, but there were definitely times when everyone was flat out bored. To fill time, she and Sean would fall back on silly conversational games like, ‘Would you Rather’ to keep themselves entertained. Or they would talk about the way times had been before…more of a ‘What do you Miss’ version of the game.

“Would you rather,” Sean began first as they lay in the leaves with their heads on their packs. Fi stared up at the pattern of the tree leaves above them, framing the sky. Thank God this situation didn’t kill all the trees, she reflected. It was sad enough seeing the barren fields as they traveled. She listened to Sean’s options: Take a hot shower everyday (always a popular choice) or Have the Internet back.

“That’s a tough one,” she sighed. At least the shower was something that maybe, just maybe, if they found Eden, would be a possibility. The Internet probably wouldn’t be back, Fi thought, maybe for the rest of her life. However long that would turn out to be. She decided. “Have the internet back.” Sean agreed.

Warm water was nice, but nearly everyone felt lost without their tablets. The only exception would have been her father, Fi thought fondly. Mike had to be the only physicist as resistant to technology as he was, she thought, chuckling. He had appreciated the Internet, of course, but he had often complained about the lack of ‘mental quiet’ it created, as he put it. Fi shook her head, ‘mental quiet’ would be nice, but it didn’t come from a lack of technology, she knew. She had no technology and absolutely no ‘mental quiet’ either. It was her turn.

“Ok,” she said, “Would you Rather…Eat chocolate cake.” Sean groaned in appreciation. “Oooooor,” she added, “Eat a giant bowl of pasta with meatballs.” Sean’s groan lengthened. His stomach gurgled and they both laughed. The sound lightened Fi’s heart. She was so incredibly thankful that the small cloud between then had passed. Sean seemed to be ok now.

After they grew tired of playing, Fi took the time to check over her gun, disassembling and cleaning parts of it once again. She cleaned her gun nearly every day, the steps becoming like a rhythm to her, another meditation. It gave her a sense of calm to feel the gun in her hand. Often she cleaned Sean’s gun for him as well, since he did not have the same taste for it that she did.

Whenever she cleaned the gun, her thoughts drifted back to those first nights at home, after she’d stolen her .22. In the early hours of the morning she would lock her door and sit in the middle of her floor to take the gun apart and put it back together over and over. She even learned to do it by feel, with her eyes closed. It would be good practice if she ever needed to work with it in darkness, she’d thought. The truth was that what little sleep she used to get had evaporated with her father’s illness, so she’d come up with all kinds of steadying time-consuming rituals to pass the time while everyone else slept. Late night television had not worked as a distraction. It was so disconnected from her pain and anxiety that she couldn’t watch it. And ‘Pretty Dresses’ had long since gone out the window. Cleaning her guns had always managed to keep her calm. After cleaning her own gun, Fi moved on to Sean’s. He had dozed off beside her as the sun sunk lower in the sky.

The sun descended and the bird songs began their slow changeover from day to night calls. As she finished reassembling Sean’s gun, the satisfying clicks as it all came together gave the ready signal. It was time to go, she thought, rousing Sean and handing him his gun. He nodded and they got ready, pulling on their packs.

Once the sky turned to black, they darted from the cover of the forest and made their way across the barren, dusty fields. As they approached the farmhouse, both drew their weapons. They split and moved around the house. They couldn’t make any sound now. Each step they took had to be made on their own. Fi moved around the front and crept up to the porch. A thick, undisturbed layer of dirt lay across the porch steps and floorboards, glowing in the rising moonlight.

Good sign, she thought, taking careful steps up the porch. A shiver ran through her for a moment as she prepared to enter. There was no sound but the creaking of the wooden shutters in the night breeze. Turning the doorknob, it clicked open and she breathed in as she pushed. It let out a creak and Fi froze, hardly breathing. Pressed against the wall beside the door, she waited, listening. Nothing. Fi leveled her gun in front of herself and whirled through the door.

The house was laid out simply in the center hall style of many farmhouses. To the right was a small dining room and to the left was a living room with a large couch. Directly before her were the stairs to the second floor. Through a doorway from the family room she could see a glimpse of the kitchen. It was important to be careful, she thought, with Sean exploring the house as well. They had to be sure they didn’t shoot each other. She tiptoed around with care and ended up meeting in the kitchen. Fi saw Sean’s silhouette in the kitchen and she gave their owl call. He stopped and then continued toward her.

“Seems like it’s clear,” he whispered as he flattened himself against the staircase wall beside her with his Glock drawn. She hummed her agreement.

“Me up, you down, meet here?” She gave commands to Sean in the form of a question to check his thoughts. He was always assessing risks.

“Yes, fine,” he agreed. Fi turned to move up the staircase. It felt like every step creaked. It took forever just to get up the stairs. Squeak. Freeze. Wait. Go. Squeak. Freeze. Wait. Go. It was annoying, but necessary. Fi was sure she heard a telltale squeak from Sean’s stairs as he descended from the kitchen to the cellar. She smiled. When they met back downstairs, Fi decided to pull out her flashlight so she could really get a sense of the place. They holstered their weapons.

“It’s definitely empty,” Fi said in a low voice.

“Yes,” Sean agreed as Fi swung the red beam of light around the room. There was a heavy layer of dust everywhere. The fine dirt from the barren fields surrounding the house had worked its way in through cracks in windows and doors. Their finger and footprints were the only disturbance in the dirt that they could find. No food had been found in the house, but that probably would have been too much to ask, Fi thought.

“Fireplace, huh?” Sean said, peering up into the soot stained brick chimney of the fireplace in the living room. “That’s pretty much a necessity. Looks like it’s been used, so let’s just hope it’s safe,” he said and Fi nodded. They both knew that the winter was going to be frigid. The fireplace sealed the deal on the farmhouse as far as Fi was concerned.

“Yeah it seems like a fit, this house,” she said. “That stream we found is in walking distance, the house can be well-protected, and we will be warm.” Fi clicked off the flashlight and dropped onto the couch where a cloud of dust exploded around her. Sean laughed at her and Fi laughed and gasped at the same time. “C’mere Sean,” she teased, patting the space next to her as he’d done to her so many times. “Come have a wonderful seat,” she laughed, choking.

“Alrighty,” Sean said and then took a leap while Fi yelled, “No Sean!” He hit the couch next to her like a ton of bricks, raising a mushroom cloud of dust that made them both hack and cough. Fi’s eyes and nose began to stream as she struggled to clear the dust.

“Uggh,” Fi sniffed. She pulled out her canteen to wash her face and clear her throat. “Well, this place will definitely need some serious and ongoing sweeping. But otherwise I think we are in good shape here.”

“I agree,” Sean said, choking as well. Served him right, Fi thought affectionately as she swigged more water from her canteen. “I think we found it,” his voice sounded warm, like he was smiling as well. It was much darker inside the house than outside in the moonlight so Fi couldn’t see his actual expression. His hand patted her leg in the dark. “This is it,” he said in a gentle voice. “Our winter Home.”