“This seems crazy,” the blond one said. “But I guess I can’t deny what I’m seeing with my own eyes.”
“What are your names?” Avian asked, wiping the rain out of his eyes. We were all completely soaked by this point.
“Susan,” the blond woman said. She was thin, the same body as the rest of us survivors had. She looked to be in her mid-thirties. She wore a thick winter coat covered by an enormous rain slicker. She sported a large hiking pack. “This here is Karmen, but she doesn’t really speak any English. Just Spanish.”
Karmen looked younger than Susan, maybe twenty-eight. Her hair was cut short, but in a way that still looked feminine. She was also shorter than Susan and more petite.
“Where are you from?” Avian asked, folding his arms across his chest. Avian had always seemed too quick to relax and trust. He’d slung his rifle over his shoulder just after we climbed out of the van.
“Wyoming,” Susan said. “My husband and I owned a ranch up there. We were fine until about seven months ago. My husband’s gone now.” Her voice faltered for a moment, but her body showed determination and resolve. This was a woman built to survive. “I’d just returned to my house after burying him when I found Karmen in my barn.”
“What are you doing clear down here then?” I asked, my eyes scanning the roads behind her. I had no way of knowing they were alone. They very well could have more of them watching us, ready to commandeer our vehicle the moment we let our guard down.
“There’s no one else with us,” Susan said, suddenly tensing. I realized then that I’d raised my rifle again and was pointing it at her lower belly. “It’s just us.”
Scanning the road and the broken down vehicles again, I lowered it just slightly. Susan eyed me warily for a few more moments before answering my question.
“About two months ago, we had the radio on,” she said. “I’ve been checking it every few weeks, just to see if anything comes up. Imagine my surprise when I heard a message saying Los Angeles had been cleared and that they were offering shelter and protection.”
The smile on Avian’s face was immediate. “That’s where we’re from,” he said, nodding in my direction. “It was Royce, our sort of military leader, who recorded the message.”
Susan’s face was suddenly filled with a mix of emotion. First unbelief, then hope, then uncertainty. “So it’s true? There really are more people out there? In the middle of such a huge city?”
Avian nodded as the comforting smile spread on his face. “It’s true. There are just over one hundred and sixty of us there.”
A laugh suddenly bubbled out of Susan’s throat and she threw her arms around Avian. Her sudden movement caught me off guard, and I reflexively raised my rifle back to her. Karmen started yelling at me in Spanish and I lowered it again. Susan immediately released Avian.
“I’m sorry,” she said, still laughing and smiling. “It’s just…wow. I couldn’t really believe it was real, but I knew I had to try.”
“If we’re staying for a while, should we set up tents so you all don’t drown?” West called from the van.
“Doesn’t look like the sun is going to break any time soon,” I called back to him. “May as well pull two of them out!”
West nodded and he and Bill set to setting two of them up.
By the time they were erected, the six of us were completely soaked. Dr. Evans couldn’t step outside of the van without getting shorted out, so he stayed in the van with Morgan. It was better that way. Susan and Karmen were still terrified of him.
I couldn’t blame them.
“So if you all are from this New Eden,” Susan said once we were settled inside and drying off. “Why are you out here? Why are you leaving the safe zone?”
We each looked at one another, all of us unsure of what to disclose. Finally, they turned to me, as if to say it was my call on how much to reveal.
“We’re on a mission, if you will,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. I had always been a leader, but being the leader was going to take some getting used to. “We think we might have a chance to fix things. We’re investigating that.”
“Fix things?” Susan said, her brow furrowing. “What do you mean by that?”
I shook my head, already wishing I hadn’t said anything. “We can’t say too much, but we’re hoping we can make things better.”
“Hmm,” Susan said, her eyes still disbelieving, but leaving it alone.
“We’ll be leaving as soon as the sun comes back out,” Avian said. “Our vehicle is solar powered.”
“Smart,” Susan said, nodding her head.
Karmen, sitting there so quiet and not saying anything, was strange and uncomfortable. I had no idea how much of our conversation she could understand. I didn’t want to ignore her, but it did seem somewhat pointless to include her in the conversation if she didn’t understand.
“You should be fairly safe getting the rest of the way there,” I said, turning back to Susan. “That doesn’t mean let your guard down, but we haven’t seen any Bane since we left New Eden.”
“Any?” she questioned.
I shook my head. “We kind of had a clearing of the city. And then…well, let’s just say they were sent away.” And I left it at that.
By now night had fallen and we all brought out the blankets and sleeping bags. Karmen and Susan would camp and eat with us until morning and then we would go our separate ways.
I had just ducked back into the van for more food, the night fully descending upon us, when I heard a moan from the back seat.
“Morga?,” I said, leaning over her seat from the back of the van.
“Eve?” she said, her voice weak. She raised a shaky hand to the tube blowing air into her nose, but it fell limp to her chest on its way. “What…where are we?”
I looked out the back of the van, back in the direction of the tents. I debated going after Avian. But this would very likely be my one and only chance to talk to her before she slipped away. I glanced up at Dr. Evans just once. He sat still and silent in his glass box in the passenger seat, staring straight forward.
It was unnerving. He looked remarkably like a Sleeper. I hoped he was just giving me privacy.
“Just outside of Las Vegas,” I said, resting my forearms on the back of the seat she lay on.
“What?” she asked, my eyes looking up at me in confusion. “Did you just say Vegas?”
I nodded. “We’re headed for NovaTor Biotics. We might reach it tomorrow. Maybe the next day.”
“Why?” she asked. She rubbed an absentminded hand over her growing stomach.
“There have been some recent developments,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Morgan, there’s a chance we can fix all this.”
“Fix what?”
“The world,” I said, barely more than a breath. The words still felt too unspeakable. It seemed cruel to say them if they couldn’t possibly be true. “There may be a way for us to kill them off. All of the Bane.”
She took a small, gasping breath, the air sounding as if it were trying to choke her as it went down. She swallowed, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment. “And you’re somehow the key to making it work,” she said, her eyes rising up to me. “Aren’t you?”
I didn’t reply for a moment. Everyone kept looking at me like some kind of savior. Like I had somehow been born into this destiny. Yet it was all just luck that it happened to work out that I could do anything. That I had anything to give.
“We’re going to give it a try,” I said, my throat feeling dry.
“Eve,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed once more. It was a long while before they opened again and she found the breath to continue. “Why am I here?”
Now it was my turn to hesitate in answering. “You know that I’m different from everyone else, but that I would do anything to protect those around me despite what I am, right?”
Her breath rattled again as she breathed in. “Of course.”
“I’m not good at dancing around things a
nd articulating words gently,” I said as I laced my fingers together. Finally, I looked back at her. “You aren’t going to make it much longer.”
Morgan nodded. “I know.”
“And the chances of the baby surviving are very slim.”
Morgan nodded again.
“What if there was a chance that we could save the baby?” I said. The air around us seemed to grow still as my words caught in the space around us. For just a moment, it felt as if everything around us was weightless and anything was impossibly possible.
“What if by becoming like me, she could live?”
Morgan’s eyes grew steady as they locked on my face. For the first time in weeks, she seemed incredibly alive. Fierce. “I would ask you to do everything in your power to make sure it happens.”
Several times I had tried to imagine how this conversation might go, if I ever got the chance to have it.
I hadn’t expected the emotion that ripped through my body.
It felt like a shudder worked its way from my toes up, like cascading rain and electric lightning. It pushed its way up to my throat, closing it in, and up to my eyes. Pushing three single teardrops out.
“I’ll do everything I can,” I said, my voice quivering.
Morgan reached up a shaking hand and grasped mine. Together, our hands shook, but they were strong and determined.
TWELVE
Morgan slipped into unconsciousness soon after we talked. Avian spent the night in the van with her, monitoring her health. Bill, West, Karmen, and Susan slept in the tents while I kept watch. But every hour or so, I would see the flap of the tent open and Bill would look out at me.
Bill always had my back.
Not long after midnight, the rain let up and the air grew colder when the clouds moved on to the south. Dawn filled the air with unreal quiet.
I’d expected to have something happen in the night. I really had. We were so close to a city. The world had continued to Evolve. The Bane had grown more aggressive, not quieter. Given it had been night and some of them did still go into inactivity during the dark hours of the twenty-four cycle—still.
I was unnerved that we had yet to see a single Bane.
“What’s wrong?” Avian asked when he stepped outside the van in the morning. He looked both ways down the freeway, his hands going to the handgun in the holster at his hip.
“Nothing,” I said, my eyes scanning the silhouette of the city in the distance. “That’s what’s wrong. Doesn’t it seem strange that there aren’t any Bane around this close to the city? It’s too quiet.”
Avian nodded as he continued to look over our surroundings. “Yeah, this is too easy.”
“We’d be seeing bodies if my army had taken care of them all here. But there’s nothing so far. I don’t know that a fire would be enough to drive the Bane out unless it just completely leveled the city. But look at it,” I said, pointing ahead. “It looks like there are still plenty of buildings for them to sleep in. So where are they?”
Avian swore under his breath, looking toward the sun where it rose in the east. “We should probably get moving.”
“Yeah,” I said. The flap to the girl’s tent was pushed open and Susan stepped out. “Hey,” I said, turning toward her. “Did you come through the city before you got to us, or did you skirt around it?”
“We hung to the edges of the city,” she said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “We needed food so we didn’t dare completely miss it. I knew it would be one of the last ones before we got to your people.”
“And were there any Bane?” I asked. My eyes jumped to the sky when a flock of birds suddenly started and flew over our heads.
“We were trying to avoid them, obviously,” Susan said, looking at me like I was stupid. “And there was the fire.”
“But did you see any? Were they inactive in any of the buildings? Did you see any of them scouting?” I asked impatiently.
Susan was quiet for a second, her gaze dropping to the ground as she reviewed their journey. “No,” she said, her brow furrowing. “Actually, we didn’t. There were tons of them north. We had to make a huge effort to avoid them. But none of the cities we have passed through yet have been as big as Vegas.”
“Something’s wrong,” Avian said as I looked at him.
“Avian, what if the sweep that I saw wasn’t the only one?” I said in a shallow breath. “What’s to say that the first gens everywhere aren’t starting sweeps? Why would it ever be limited to that one?”
Avian swore again. He crossed to the tent and tossed the flap aside. “West! Time to get up. We’ve got to go.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked from within, his voice groggy.
“Our time may have just run out,” Avian said, already disassembling the girl’s tent as Karmen stepped out of it.
With the world finally dry, Dr. Evans stepped out from his glass prison box. Susan and Karmen started, stepping back several steps. He just held his hands up and took a step away from them.
“Judging from you two, something is wrong,” he said, placing his hands where his hips should have been. He was much more shapeless without any skin or fat to fill him out. Just bones and mechanical organs.
“I made a huge mistake in assuming there would only ever be one Bane sweep,” I said, helping Avian pack up the tent. By this point, West had rolled out of his tent and Bill returned to help him pack it up. “Why aren’t there any Bane coming after us, Dr. Evans?”
He, like Avian and I had done, turned to the city. “If it is a sweep, this is different. The city still looks like it’s standing.”
“I don’t know,” I said as I shoved the tent into the back of the solar tank. “But something isn’t right.”
“Karmen, Susan,” Avian said as we flew around packing and getting ready to go. “You two need to get moving. The road was clear our whole way here. Be careful, but move fast. We have no way of knowing if it will stay that way.”
“Find Royce when you get there,” I said, checking that my magazine was fully loaded. “Tell him to have the scientists work as fast as they can. Tell him we don’t have nearly as much time as we thought.”
“Royce,” Susan said, nodding her head as she pulled her pack on. Karmen did the same. “He’s the leader in New Eden?”
I nodded. “By now he’ll have found out something we did without his knowledge and he’s going to be angry about it, but tell him we will be back as soon as we possibly can.”
“Okay,” she nodded as Bill slammed the back doors to the solar tank closed. “Thank you for taking care of us last night.”
Bill and West climbed back in the van while Avian and I held back a moment.
“We were more than happy to,” Avian said with a nod. “Those of us left need to help each other.”
“I hope we see you both again soon,” Susan said.
“Hasta luego,” Karmen said. “Ser seguro.”
And while I didn’t know exactly what her words meant, I understood their sincerity.
Avian and I climbed into the van and waved goodbye. Karmen and Susan started down the road we had come.
“You want me to start through the city?” Bill asked as he started the tank. I breathed a sigh of relief when it fired right up. The sun had risen and charged the solar panels.
“I don’t think we have any choice,” I said as I looked around to my companions. Adrenaline was burning through the blood of everyone around me. “We have to see what is going on. If the Bane really are starting more sweeps…”
“Got it,” Bill said, nodding when I didn’t continue.
We rolled forward toward the city. Within minutes we were passing gas stations and long abandoned roadside stands.
I stood when we started creeping into the city outskirts, and unlatched the hatch. A gust of cold air blasted into the tank as I pushed it open. I pulled myself up and over the lip. I straddled the hole with my legs, my butt sitting on the very edge of the lip, my legs spreading across the hole and bracing the other
side with my boots. I reached across and placed my hands on the handles of the firing turret.
“You want any back up, up there?” West called from below.
“I’ll let you know,” I said distractedly as I scanned the roads around us.
Soon, the scattered buildings grew more compacted and the shops grew bigger. But so far everything looked intact.
“You see any of them?” West called up. I looked down to see him peering out his window, his rifle propped up in it.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not a single one.”
Windows revealed abandoned buildings. There were no inactive watchers from within. Not even one lone Sleeper. No Hunters crashed out of buildings to rush us.
So far, the city was abandoned.
We drove with baited breath for another twenty minutes that felt like days. We waited for movement, for a helicopter to swoop down on us from the sky, for the Evolved world to be recognizable.
As the city grew taller and more glamorous, the buildings showed their destruction.
So may had collapsed, had caved in on themselves and were nothing more than piles of rubble. Others showed scorch marks. Trees were smoldering stumps and the road was blackened in long stretches.
The air tasted very faintly of smoke and ash.
“How long ago do you think this happened?” I asked, surveying the destruction.
“A few weeks,” Avian said, though he didn’t sound too sure.
“Considering there are no more flames burning and how the air seems to be mostly cleared,” Dr. Evans said. “I would estimate the blaze started over a month ago. The city would have burned for weeks. I would even guess that the rain we saw last night put out the last of the flames.”
By this point, Bill had pulled off of the main freeway and taken to a main road that led us right into the heart of the city. We approached the highest buildings.
The buildings on both our left and right had once been beautiful. I saw a row of white columns with beautiful detail carved into them. Scorched trees and bushes hinted at what must have once been fantastic landscaping. But now they were burned to the ground and crumbled.