The world was doused in a hazy color of gray as the sun fought to break through the heavy clouds above us. The rain continued to pour, soaking us in more rain than I had ever seen fall at one time. Small streams started tracing lines in the desert, running to unseen rivers.
A few hours into my scouting Avian walked out, using a raincoat that had been smartly packed to keep his head dry. He walked over to me, giving me shelter as well, and handed me two carrots.
“I doubt we’re going to see any of them in this,” Avian said, having to speak louder than normal to talk over the noise of the rain pounding above our heads. “They don’t like the water too much.”
“I’m not taking any risks,” I said as I bit the end of one of the carrots off. “And what was that back there? You know I can take care of myself.”
“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?”
West didn’t seem to have anything to say in response to that.
“Don’t think you’ve won this,” Avian said quietly.
“I know I haven’t!” West nearly shouted, his voice cracking. “I see every look she gives you, like you’re the center of her entire world. She trusts you so much I can’t even comprehend it! I hate every time I see her slip her hand into yours, the way she looks more human and more at home than I have ever seen her than when she’s with you.
“But I know the way I make her feel when she is with me. I’ve never seen that intensity between the two of you. I make her feel alive in a way you haven’t.”
“Not yet,” Avian said quietly.
I couldn’t take anymore then. This had to end between them, right now, even if I hadn’t made my final decision.
I got to my feet and stepped out of the tent and was around it the next second later.
“Stop it!” I yelled louder than I had meant to. “Stop it, both of you!”
Their faces filled with surprise and mixes of shame and embarrassment, knowing they had been caught and overheard.
“I am not some prize,” I said through clenched teeth. “This is not a war to be won. I know I’ve made a mess of things and I intend to clean it up. But I can’t do it, knowing that at any moment things are going to explode between the two of you. So grow up and get back to what you’re supposed to be doing. Protecting Eden.”
Before either of them could respond, I walked off.
I felt like my blood was boiling. What was their problem? Was I nothing more than a prize? When had this become a competition between them?
Maybe I wouldn’t pick either of them just to teach them a lesson.
If only it could be that easy.
The rest of the day passed painfully slow. There was so little to do and I could only pace our twenty yard perimeter so many times. We all sat around, awkward silences running rampant, just waiting for the sun to fall into the west.
But in the reliability of nature it finally did. We loaded up onto the trailer and kept along our route.
I watched Morgan as she started falling asleep in the cabin of the truck. What a terrifying thing, to have this other life growing inside of you, knowing it counted on you for every little thing. She had to be so careful, to not do anything to upset the balance of its growth. And she was now all the more tied to Eli. They had created a brand new life between them. That was pretty amazing.
Could I be so tied to someone? Not in the way of having children together, I was almost positive that it was not possible for me to have children at all, what with my partially steel interior. But that kind of a connection. Could I handle being so close to someone, to let them into my life like that?
I glanced down at West, supposedly asleep. I tried to imagine a life with him, of committing myself to him. Would it be a lifetime of feeling alive, of living in the fire we created? Or would it turn out to
be a life filled with distrust? Of constant arguments where I couldn’t hardly stand to look at him? And was Avian right? Was I going to be putting everyone at risk by being with him? What if being with West meant that I lost myself?
I let my eyes quickly glance to Avian where he sat poised with his rifle at the front of the trailer. What about a life with Avian? Would life be so different? We would share a tent, never have another awkward moment of wondering who to sit by at nights, at dinner. But how would things change? How could Avian make me feel? Being with him like that?
I didn’t think I could find out unless I was certain it was him that I was going to choose. I couldn’t do that to him.
My chest suddenly ached for Sarah. I wanted to talk to her, to tell her every little thing I was feeling and let her analyze them all for me. I wanted someone to help me figure this out.
It was then that I missed our old way of life as well. I wanted the days of simple scouting back, days of tracking through the woods with my team of Bill and Graye. I missed going on raids, when it was always dangerous but still possible to go into the city. I missed having the sweat roll down my back as I helped the others pull the weeds in the garden that was overflowing with our harvest.
You never realize what you’ve got until it’s gone.
Thankfully, nothing happened that night. We gassed up in a small town that looked like it had been dying before the Fall even happened. Avian poured two more of the blue bottles into the tank and we drove another hour before stopping in more desert for the day.
I didn’t let anyone know but I was panicked that day. Avian told everyone that we only had maybe two more days of traveling until we got to our destination. That should have been a relief but I still had no idea what my decision was going to be. I need more time. But I also had to decide, now.
I pretended to sleep that day but didn’t. I stared up at the tan canvas above my head, my mind empty, my eyes seeing nothing. It was nice to have a few hours to clear my head of all the confusion.