By dawn, Eden was teaming with life. I wondered how much sleep anyone had even gotten. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. Nerves were obviously running high.
People said hurried good-bye’s, giving hugs, tears pooling in their eyes. I realized then that they knew this could be a permanent good-bye. My chest hardened as I watched Avian talking to Victoria again, gave her a slightly longer than necessary (in my opinion) hug good-bye.
Bill and Graye walked up to me and to my surprise, a pang formed in my chest. These two had been my team. We were part of the elite, the best. In a way they had been my brothers.
For some reason I wasn’t all that surprised when Bill wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into a hug. “Be careful out there,” he said quietly before he released me.
I gave him a small smile. I looked over at Graye and he could only give me a tight lipped smile and a nod of agreement. I didn’t expect to get a hug from him. Graye wasn’t one to hug. “Just remember that they can still blow you up,” he said with a smirk.
“Thanks,” I said with a chuckle as I shook my head. “You two be careful, too. You’re smart, you know how to survive. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”
“Promise,” Bill said, his cool gray eyes on me.
I walked back to the truck, joining Avian and West. “Everything ready?” I asked, feeling both anxious and reluctant to leave.
“I believe so,” Avian said as he hoisted his bag of half the medical supplies into the back of the truck. We couldn’t fit much more in it.
Gabriel walked up to us, his hands stuffed into his pockets. His lips were invisible in his beard as he pressed them tightly together.
“We’ll reach the first destination this evening,” Avian said as he turned to Gabriel. “We’ll leave the marker with any notes on what we encounter today.”
Gabriel nodded. “I wanted to thank you,” he said, his voice suddenly rough sounding. “For keeping things going when I snapped. It was selfish of me.”
Avian pressed his lips together and nodded. “No one can really blame you.”
Gabriel extended his hand and Avian gave it a tight shake. He then shook West and I’s hands as well. “Be safe,” he said. “We have to keep Eden alive. We may be all that’s left out there.”
Final good-byes were said and all the members of our first group loaded onto the trailer and into the truck. A man I did not know very well had volunteered to drive. He had only been a member of Eden for a short time. I believed his name was Tuck. Morgan climbed into the front cab with him and so did another woman by the name of Bea. The other fourteen of us got to ride the bumpy thousand miles on the trailer.
The members of the second group gathered around as Tuck started the truck to life. As he pulled away they waved, tears falling down half their faces.
Would we ever see any of them again?
The first hour was slow going as we made our way through the forest over uneven ground. We had worked hard to keep ourselves hidden so that we couldn’t be found by any still-remaining marauders or Fallen. We each had to hold onto the short railing that lined the edge of the trailer to keep from being bucked off.
No one said anything for the first few hours but we all knew what the other was thinking. There was uncertainty and fear about traveling into the unknown. There was the very real possibility that this truck wouldn’t continue to run for more than another mile. Or it could break down in the middle of the desert, only half way to our destination. Helicopters could buzz over our heads at any time, reign down on us with dozens of Fallen and infect them all.
There were endless horrible ways for us to die on this journey.
But it was death by starvation or infection for sure if we stayed.
We jarred over a rough patch, everyone jerking violently to the right. “Careful!” I was surprised when Avian shouted to Tuck.
“I’m sorry,” he called. “I don’t see a clearer path.”
Avian said something under his breath as he turned his eyes forward.
“You okay?” I asked quietly. I suddenly felt all too open to everyone. There wouldn’t be too much privacy for the next week or so.
Avian shook his head, his eyes darting to the cab of the truck. “Morgan’s pregnant,” he whispered.
“Pregnant?” I repeated. I glanced at the back of her head through the window. It explained why she was sitting up there.
Avian nodded. “Sharp, rough movement like that isn’t very good for the baby.”
“Should she be coming with us if she is carrying a child?” I asked. Suddenly this journey seemed all the more perilous.
“I thought it would be safer. Victoria would be able to stitch a wound or anything basic but her training is limited. Not that I know that much about taking care of a pregnant woman but I thought it would be better. She’s not that far along anyway. She should be just fine.”
I glanced at Morgan’s husband, Eli, saw that he was watching us. I thought I was supposed to say congratulations or something but it didn’t seem like something you could say anymore. This wasn’t a happy world to be bringing a baby into. Our world wasn’t a good place for children.
After two hours the truck pulled to a stop and Tuck poked his head out the window to look back at us. “This is going to get really rough and I’m going to have to go really slow. I think it would be best if everyone got off and walked for a bit.”
Without another word, everyone hopped off and we started the slow journey down the rocky face of the mountain on foot.
As we moved I watched people, gauging their ability, strength, and skills. A few of them moved carefully, watching their step as they moved over the rocks. Others had more confidence, some of them more practiced from helping with scouting.
And at the front of them, walking to the side of the truck was Avian. He held a shotgun tight in his hands, his eyes scanning the trees and sky before us. I couldn’t recall ever seeing Avian with a gun. But his hands were perfectly positioned, his frame aware of everything around him. His shoulders were set tight, his knees bent slightly, ready to run or fight at any second.
I had never seen the soldier side of Avian before.
I then had a vision of Avian in a camouflage uniform, a gun in his hands, running through a bomb blasted field. I had forgotten that Avian had been in the Army when the world had started to fall apart.
Avian was probably better trained than I was to survive in our new world.
It’s curious how a person’s value is placed. We needed soldiers. We needed people who could protect us, who knew what they were doing. But we had also needed someone who could take care of us, stitch us back together. Even with the limited amount of training Avian had, he was more valuable to us as a make-do doctor than as the best trained soldier we had.
Remembering this made the pull inside my chest all the stronger.
“So what do you think it will be like?” West’s voice jarred me back to my senses. “When we get to our new location?”
“Uh,” I stuttered, trying to refocus my attention from Avian to West. “Warm? I don’t know.”
He chuckled, adjusting his grip on his rifle. “I hope wherever we end up it’s near the ocean. I remember as a kid going to the ocean with my father a few times.”
“What was it like?” I asked. The ocean. It was a term I barely understood.
“Big,” he breathed. “It never ended. It was really beautiful. And scary.”
“How could a body of water be scary?” I said, my voice mocking.
“All that water is a lot bigger than you,” he said as he glanced over at me. “You think you could control the violence of the ocean?”
I was quiet after that, trying to imagine what the ocean would look like. It was hard to imagine it as a threat. “I’d like to see the ocean someday.”
West looked over at me with another smile, bumping his shoulder against mine.
For the briefest moment, it felt like my heart jumped into my throat. But the strange part w
as that for just a second, my vision went completely black.
I tripped over the stones under my feet, throwing my hands out to catch myself before I fell.
“Whoa!” West said, obvious concern in his voice. “You okay?”
“Of course,” I tried to recover, brushing the dirt off my knees. I noticed Avian had glanced back at me, a probing look in his eyes. I shook my head and he turned his attention back front.
I didn’t think I had ever tripped before. Ever.
“And I hope it never snows,” West continued, brushing my incident off. “After last winter I wouldn’t mind if I never saw snow again.”
“Agreed,” I said distractedly.
We were both quiet for a few minutes as we kept pace with the rest of the group. “Do you think we’ll ever be able to stop running from them?” West suddenly asked.
I thought about my response before I spoke. “I guess if we could hide ourselves good enough. Push far enough into the country. If they can’t find us, they can’t infect us.”
West kept his eyes glued to the rocks at our feet. “I’m so sick of running from them,” he said quietly.
“Me too.”
We continued for another hour before we got to the base of the mountain and out of the canyon. We would be stopping here until dark. Those who knew how to cook set to prepping lunch, others lounged around, unused to not having much of anything to do. We would wait here until dark, when it would be safer to travel. We had only traveled the last few hours in daylight because it was too dangerous to come down the mountain in the dark. We all would have killed ourselves on the rocks and cliffs. We would take shifts, some would sleep while others would keep watch.
I’d be staying up all night, as usual.
“Avian,” I said as I walked to his side. “I’m going to get a few minutes of sleep before nightfall.”
“I think I’d better do that too,” he said as he looked around at those who were traveling with us. “I think it would be best if I stayed up at night since my rifle has a night vision scope. Koby,” he suddenly said to a man as he walked past us. He was roughly the same age as Avian. “I’m checking out for a while. Keep an eye on things, will you?”
He nodded, securing his handgun. “West,” I called as I spotted him. “Keep watch for a while?”
“Sure,” he said with a nod and automatically turned his eyes to our perimeters.
Avian and I walked towards a tree, each greedy for the shade it would provide. We settled on the wild grass that grew at its base, side-by-side in the coolness.
“I’ve never seen the soldier side of you before,” I said as my eyes slid closed.
“There hasn’t been much opportunity,” he said as he gave a sigh as he relaxed. “It feels weird being back in that mode. It was drilled into me constantly for over two years and it kept me alive for another six months. Then it got pushed to the back of my mind.”
“Eden has been lucky to have you,” I said quietly as I shifted around to get more comfortable, sleep already creeping in to take me over.
“I could say the same about you,” he said, his voice drifting away.
A few moments later I joined him.
TWENTY-FIVE
My heart thumped in my chest as I tried to press my back further into the corner. My vision blurred, the dark shadows before me blending together.
“She’s never been this aggressive before,” a voice said. It felt like someone was screaming into my ear. I pressed my hands over the sides of my head, trying to block it all out.
“She’s afraid,” a lighter voice said.
I couldn’t make out anything anymore as I opened and closed my eyes, trying to clear my vision. My head felt fuzzy and clouded.
The next second all I could make out was the scent of steel under me. And that my head felt so cold.
Then I heard it. The sound of a drill.
My eyes slid open, blinking immediately closed against the dimming but still bright light of the evening sun. I turned my head to the side, raising my hand to block it from my face. At the same moment my pillow moved and I opened my eyes to find myself nose to nose with Avian.
“You were having a nightmare,” he said quietly as he pushed a few stray hairs out of my face. I realized then that I was lying in his arms, him as my pillow, still under the same tree. After I glanced around at our caravan and knew things were still safe I relaxed again, resting my head against his chest.
“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.