Eden (12 page)

The wagon made good pace
as we let them go ahead of us, and it didn’t take long before it
was out of sight, leaving Avian and I alone.

“
He knew who I was,” I
suddenly said as we walked through the trees.  “West, he knew
me before I came here.  His grandfather experimented on
me.  He’s the reason I can do the things I can do.”

“
He told you this?” Avian
asked, his brow furrowed.

I shook my head. 
“No, I found a notebook filled with the things he did to me. 
West said I had been at this facility for as long as he could
remember.  Possibly since I was a baby.  He told me we
used to play together as children sometimes.”

“
I have a hard time
imagining you playing anything,” Avian said.  I noticed a
smile was tugging on his lips.

“
I can’t imagine I was
very good at it.”

A chuckle suddenly broke
from Avian’s chest.  I couldn’t help smiling too.

We walked quietly for a
while.  I sensed how relaxed Avian was.  I wondered how
it felt.  I never felt relaxed.  My ears listened to the
sounds of the woods around us, searching for any sign of
alert.  My eyes scanned the trees.  I even smelled at the
air, being alert for any scent of exhaust from an ATV or a
helicopter.

I kept the handgun West
had given back to me tucked into the back of my pants.  I was
ready to pull it out at any moment and unload it, grab Avian, and
run for our lives. 

Despite Avian’s relaxed
stance, I had little doubt the bulky bag he had on his back
contained the CDU.  He wasn’t coming out into these woods
unprepared either.

“
Why did you ask Graye to
get the necklace for me?” I asked, glancing over at his
face.

Avian hesitated for a few
moments.  “I wanted you to have something special for your
birthday,” he said as he looked at me briefly.  I noted the
way he stiffened slightly.  “I thought you should have
something a woman would normally have.  I hoped you would like
it.”

I looked away from him,
fixing my eyes on the trail.  I couldn’t think of anything
that seemed less fit for me as a gift.  I’d never owned any
other piece of jewelry nor had I ever had the desire to own
any.

“
You shouldn’t have asked
him to,” I said quietly.  “It wasn’t worth it.”

“
I know,” he answered me
even more quietly. 

Regret for my words seeped
into me.  Tye’s death had been hardest on Avian and I kept
bringing it up.  Now I was pointing it out that in a way it
had been his fault he was dead.

Not really even knowing
what I was doing, I reached over and took Avian’s hand in
mine.  He squeezed my fingers, his shoulder brushing
mine.

“
There are getting to be
fewer of them you know,” Avian said after a few moments.  “The
Hunters.  Right after the infection started and people stopped
being people, there were thousands of them.  It was all too
easy for them to turn others.  We didn’t understand what was
happening at first.  The base where I was stationed in what
used to be Texas was flooded with them.  I don’t know how I
escaped.  But as more and more people became infected, Fallen
who used to be Hunters stopped hunting.  There aren’t that
many more of them left now.”

“
They just stand there,
you know,” I said as I recalled the haunting scene.  “Like
they’re waiting for something.  Just standing there inside,
watching the world crumble outside.”

“
I didn’t know that,” he
said, his brow furrowing.  I then realized he wouldn’t have
known.  After rescuing Sarah, Avian had come here and he never
left.  We couldn’t afford for him to leave.  He was too
needed in Eden.

I was glad it wasn’t
me.  That would have felt too much like being a
prisoner.  I wasn’t the only one that felt like I had the
weight of Eden resting on my shoulders.  We wouldn’t have
survived without Avian, just as they wouldn’t have survived without
me.

“
I was out of my mind,”
Avian said, his voice tight as he looked down at his feet. 
“When you left.  I didn’t know what happened to you, what was
going to happen to you.  You’re tough, but you’re not
indestructible.  If it hadn’t have been for Sarah I would have
come after you.”

“
You can’t do that,” I
said as I furrowed my brows, looking back up at him.  “They
need you here.”  And there I was, making him a prisoner of
Eden again. 

Avian slowed, pulling me
to a stop with him, our hands still clasped together.  “Don’t
do that again, Eve.  Don’t run off on me.”

I looked up into Avian’s
face, surprised at the intensity that burned in his eyes.  His
face was closer than I had expected it to be.  I took a sharp
breath in as I recalled the feeling of West crushing his lips to
mine.  This was different though.  This was Avian. 
He wouldn’t do it that way.

“
I’ll do what I have to,”
I finally managed to say.  My heart was pounding in my chest
in a way that was foreign to me.  “I’ll protect them all till
the day I don’t have any more fight in me.”

He continued to look at me
for a long, intense moment.  He brought his other hand and
softly brushed a thumb across my cheek.  My skin tingled as
his hand went back to his side.  He started walking back down
the path, my hand still in his.

“
Tell me what it was like,
what it would have been like, if the world hadn’t fallen apart,” I
said, moving on when I wasn’t sure how to handle Avian’s intensity
or the intensity that was building up inside of me.  “What
would my life have been like right now, if I wasn’t a cybernetic
human hybrid?”

That brought a sad little
smile to his face.  “Let’s see, it’s early May.  You
would have been a senior in high school.  You’d be dying to
get out of school.  The last few months of your senior year
are agony.  All you want is for it to be over.

“
Prom would probably be
around this time.  You would have had a dozen different guys
ask you to go with them.  You would have had your
pick.”

“
What’s prom?” I
asked.

Avian chuckled. 
“It’s a dance.  It’s probably the biggest event of the school
year.  Girls buy fancy dresses and guys wear tuxedos. 
People rent fancy cars and pick up their dates.  Then they go
to the dance and just have fun.”

The things Avian told me
about seemed so foreign.  It was like he was reading to me out
of a fairy tale book and I barely even understood the terminology
he used.  I would never go to a prom.

“
You might have had a
boyfriend.  The two of you would go out on special outings,
just the two of you or with friends.  You might try and sneak
out of your parent’s house to try and see him.  Boys always
get girls into trouble.”

“
I can’t imagine you
getting me into trouble,” I said as I glanced over at him. 
“Is that how you were?”

Avian gave a little
chuckle and looked at the ground.  “I was the guy that
couldn’t get up the nerve to ask the girl I wanted out.  I
would have stayed home by myself, burying my head in my latest
health or medical book. 

“
I would have wanted to
ask you but you would have said no.”

I looked over at Avian and
really
looked
at
him.  He was tall, at least six feet.  He wasn’t built as
big as Bill was, but he wasn’t small.  He had the lean frame
of a man who worked hard and had lived on a rations diet for the
last six years.  His dark short hair accented the tanned color
of his skin, his surprisingly blue eyes piercing.  “I highly
doubt that.”

He smiled at me and
squeezed my hand.

“
Problem would have been
that while you would still be in high school, I would have still
been in the Army, hopefully going through real medical
school.  People wouldn’t have liked the age difference. 
You would have barely even been legal.”

I gave a little
chuckle. 

I considered what I might
have been like if I hadn’t grown up the way I did.  I was as
mature as any of the other women in Eden.  They didn’t look
down on me and I didn’t consider any of the others superior to
myself.  But maybe if I hadn’t been experimented on and grown
up in a world of running and raids I wouldn’t have been that
way.  Maybe all I would have cared about would have been
jewelry and what boy was asking me to the prom or what dress I was
going to wear.

The world we lived in made
me grow up.  I didn’t know what it was like to be a real
teenager.

We walked at a swift pace
for another two hours before signs of life were detected.  I
glanced at Avian who gave me a weak smile, the smile of knowing the
tiring endless work that was before the both of us.  I
returned his smile, let go of his hand, and went to help reassemble
Eden.

TEN

With as little as we
possessed these days it didn’t take long to put everything back
together.  Everyone helped everyone, no one was left in
distress about what needed to be done.  We were a family, a
unit that worked as one.

Things were different
though.  With Sarah’s newfound medical condition, she had
moved into Avian’s tent permanently.  The seizures were
infrequent but happened enough that Avian insisted.  I was on
my own now.

Avian and Gabriel’s tents
were always placed close together since, in a way, they were the
leaders of Eden.  I would have set up my tent next to theirs,
but when I realized West had set up not far from their tents, I
assembled mine on the farthest edge of the clearing. 
Forgiveness wasn’t one of my stronger traits.

Our new location was as
beautiful as Morgan had said.  The lake was crystal clear, the
sunlight dazzling as it danced upon its surface.  A clearing
to the side of it provided the perfect place to set up camp. 
It was also a perfect defense location.  Should any of the
Hunters find us here, we could all head into the water where they
couldn’t follow.  As long as they didn’t start
shooting.

It was, however, much
further from the gardens.  As I walked to the gardens for my
shift the first morning, I figured it took me at least forty-five
minutes.  But by a week later we were all used to it and made
the trek without complaint.  The fact that the garden was
starting to yield early crops helped that.

The sun shone down on us
as we worked on the rows of vegetables, the temperature rising
slowly.  It was always hard, having to move locations but it
was difficult to complain considering how the weather was warming
and the perfectness of the new location.

Graye worked silently two
rows behind me.  We had talked little since I realized what he
had done for Avian.  In a strange way, I felt like I should
apologize to him but at the same time, it wasn’t me that had asked
him to grab the necklace. 

Terrif directed people
soundlessly as to the areas they should work on.  I could tell
he was getting flustered with Wix who had pulled up a section of
carrots, thinking they were weeds.  It was hard to stay mad at
him though when he started eating the green stems as a way of
apology.

West worked in the
opposite corner, never looking up as he weeded in the potato
patch.  We had kept up a careful pattern of avoidance ever
since I had discovered the notebook, barely uttering more than five
words to each other.

I pulled a massive weed
out of the patch of peas I was working on, and tossed it into a
wheelbarrow.  My eyes scanned the tree line for the fiftieth
time since we had arrived.  Even though all the scouting
parties had found no signs of the Hunters, I felt uneasy. 
They had to still be out there somewhere.  Hunters were
persistent.

The afternoon shift
arrived and I bolted out of the garden as soon as I handed my
gloves off.  I wasn’t ready to have to talk to West yet, I
wasn’t sure what I should say or how I would even react. 
Apparently he wasn’t ready to talk to me either.  That was
just fine with me. 

Upon arriving back at
camp, I looked for Sarah.  I’d had little chance to talk to
her ever since she had gotten sick.  I didn’t want her to feel
like I was avoiding her.

Just as I was about step
inside their tent, Avian came out, our bodies bumping into each
other unexpectedly.  His vivid blue eyes looked down at me, a
small smile coming to his lips as he grabbed my shoulders to steady
the both of us.  A hint of a smile crept into the corner of my
lips as well.

“
Sorry,” I said.  “I
just came to see Sarah.”

“
She’s inside resting,” he
said as he withdrew his hands after a long hesitation.  “She
had another seizure a few minutes ago.”

“
Is she going to be
alright?” I asked, concern flooding through me.

“
I think so,” he said as
he smiled at me again, warmth spreading through his
eyes.

“
I’m not deaf, you know,”
Sarah called from inside the tent.  “And I’m still
here.”

Avian chuckled, placing a
hand on my arm again.  “I’ve got to go.  Victoria is
having troubles with her foot again.”

“
Bye,” I said as he walked
away.  As he did, I caught a glimpse of West before he ducked
into his tent, causing my heart to jump into my throat for a
moment.  I wondered why my chest gave a strange
squeeze.