It was solid, far heavier than I expected it to be.
Tearing back the brown paper packaging, I found a box. I lifted the lid to find a beautiful, silver handgun.
“I kind of thought it just screamed ‘Eve.’”
I turned to see Avian leaning in the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Is this a Desert Eagle .44 magnum?” I asked, my voice disbelieving. I looked back at the firearm. I pulled the clip out and found it fully loaded.
“Yep,” Avian said, crossing the room and stopping by my side. “I found it while I was out with the rehoming crew.”
“These are nearly impossible to find,” I said with a laugh in my voice. “And you just happen across one?”
Avian placed his hands on my shoulders. He leaned in close, brushing his lips across my shoulder. “Uh huh.”
“You want to go test it out after duty tomorrow?” I asked, replacing the clip and eying along the barrel.
“I was hoping you would say that,” he said and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I got myself a new compound bow and a quiver full of broad tipped carbon shaft arrows. I wanted to test them out.”
Setting the gun down on the bed, the safety on, I turned and faced Avian. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me in close. There was a hint of a smile playing in the corners of his mouth.
“Are you using firearms to get me alone in my room?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, his smile growing as he pushed the door closed.
Avian’s lips were as familiar as the feeling of clothing against my skin, but he was different fabrics and textures every time they met. His lips consumed my own, trailed to my jaw, explored my neck, sought other places on my body.
I lay back on the bed, my new firearm hard under my spine. Avian lifted me further onto the bed and he shifted on top of me. My hands clutched the fabric of his shirt and as his lips trailed once again to my throat, the fabric suddenly split as I tugged. Neither of us noticed as I let the tattered remains fall to the floor.
Avian was the one sure way to pull me back to the surface on my dark, drowning days.
His hands held the small of my back, his skin meeting mine in a way that threatened to black me out. My breath came out ragged in a way hours of running never managed to bring out of me.
I tugged on his lower lip with my teeth, my hand running over his buzzed hair. I loved it when it got to this length. It was soft and fuzzy. I rolled on top of him, my legs straddling his.
Somehow we'd found heaven on Earth in the middle of hell. Avian and I together, that was what it was. Heaven. Happiness.
There was a knock on the door. “Eve?” Royce’s voice rang though the heavy wood. “You in there?”
I jerked back from Avian, covering my mouth to stifle the scream or laugh I knew was about to come. My face felt warm and I knew I was blushing.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I said, springing off of Avian and straightening my clothes. I half-tripped across the room and cracked the door open.
Royce shook his head, a coy smile playing on his lips that said he knew exactly what I had just been doing.
“You need something?” I squeaked.
“Dr. Beeson and Dr. Stone would like a report on West,” Royce said. His own face was slightly red with embarrassment.
“Okay, I’ll be up in a few minutes,” I said, my voice higher pitched than I would have liked.
“Five minutes,” he said, attempting to be serious once again. “Oh, and Avian,” he said loudly. My face flushed all the more hot. “Nice work on the block five scout. Looks like those units will be perfect.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Avian called from behind me. I faintly heard him suppressing a laugh.
Royce just shook his head as he walked away. I heard him mutter something like “horny hybrid” under his breath.
I turned back to Avian, feeling utterly horrified.
Avian burst into laughter.
“This is not funny, Avian!” I said, throwing a box of tissues in his direction.
He just laughed as he dodged them. “I have to say, I never thought I’d have the experience of being walked in on by the father with you,” he said.
“Royce…” I started to argue.
“He might as well be,” Avian said, the smile still on his face. “Trust me, he’s protective enough of you to be your father.”
My face still felt hot. “Well, I’m fully aware of what the human emotion of embarrassment feels like now.”
Avian chuckled and bent to grab his shirt. He held up the tattered remains with a ridiculous smile.
“Sorry about that,” I said, not feeling sorry in the slightest.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said light-heartedly as he dropped it into my garbage can. “I can always get another in this city.”
I couldn't help but stare at him for a moment. He really was beautiful. His eyes burned bright in the dim light, his brow heavy and dark, giving him a deep and soulful look. His jaw was strong, all his features so serious and deep. I'd heard stories about angels—beautiful, good, and perfect creatures that came from heaven and walked the earth.
Avian was an angel if ever there were one.
“You’d better get going or you’re going to get in trouble with your dad,” Avian teased, pressing a kiss to my forehead. I punched him in the arm, maybe a little too hard considering he winced.
“Thank you for the gun,” I said, truly meaning it.
“You’re welcome,” he said, pressing a kiss to my lips.
THREE
That night, Avian had a nightmare about Sarah. They came frequently and ferociously. It was the guilt of leaving her behind, back in the mountains. It ate at him. He knew there had been nothing he could do about it. But that didn’t prevent the nightmares.
Nights like those he found his way into my bed.
I woke again sometime around four in the morning. Seeing Avian still asleep, I slid out from next to him, pulled my work clothes and boots on, and slipped out the door. I made my way through the dark halls to the kitchen, my stomach growling. Coming to Los Angeles had been good for everyone in Eden. We had all been starving when we arrived, trying to survive off of dwindling food stores after the Bane burned the gardens to ash.
The kitchen was dark, as it should be this time of night. Everyone was adjusting back to a diurnal sleeping schedule quickly.
Flipping a light on, I went for the refrigerator.
“I take it you couldn’t sleep either?”
My fingers flew to the gun at my hip and I poised it in front of me.
“I see all your old habits haven’t died just yet,” West said, his familiar cocky grin cracking on his lips. His face looked more like its old self when he smiled. He sat on the counter, a half-eaten carrot in one hand. “Still the same old gun-happy Eve.”
“Geeze, West,” I griped at him, slipping my gun back into its holster. I reached for an orange from the fridge. “Were you trying to get your head shot off?”
“If someone is going to do it, it might as well be you,” he said, hopping down from the counter.
“What are you doing up right now?” I asked, digging my fingers into the rind of the orange. Its strong odor flooded my nose.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said, leaning back against the upper cabinets. “Nightmares.”
I nodded. I knew what that was like. But lately my nightmares usually involved West.
He stood there for a long minute, staring at me as I ate the orange. I couldn’t quite meet his eyes. I fought the urge to turn and leave, to not have to answer the million questions and accusations I knew were running through his head.
“You’re different,” West finally said. My eyes rose to meet his as I wiped my hands on my pants. My heart was beating just a little too fast. He slid off the counter.
West took a step closer to me. I could see the conflict in his face. Before, he would have reached for me, touched my face, tried to take my hand. But
I had made my choice. And it wasn’t him. “You seem…older? More beaten.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, trying to keep my voice hard. I wasn’t going to show how uncomfortable I was. I wasn’t going to let him get to me.
“Was it easy?” he asked. “Just flipping it off like that?”
“West, don’t do this,” I said, shaking my head.
“This kind of seems like something we should talk about,” he said. There was obvious pain in his eyes. There was anger right alongside it. “Don’t you think?”
“We have talked about it,” I replied softly, my eyes dropping.
West faltered at that.
We had talked, the first time he had woken up. He’d been in disbelief, over his infection, over my choice, over what he was to do with his future.
“This hasn’t been easy for you, has it?” he asked, taking another half step forward. “What happened to me?”
“Doesn’t that sound a bit presumptuous to you?” Something stung under the surface of my skin and my eyes dropped to the blue glow of West’s inhibitor.
“I know you, Eve,” West said, his voice growing quiet. He reached up and pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear, bringing him even closer. It felt like all my bones were seizing up, my blood hissing to life. “Better than even Avian knows you. You might have picked him, but I know what happened to me had an effect on you.”
“Not like you’re thinking though,” I managed to say. My jaw clenched, pain prickling along my bones. “I couldn’t live with the guilt, knowing you didn’t know what I had done, that I’d finally made my choice.”
“Are you sure that’s it?” West asked, his finger tracing along my cheek.
My breath caught in my throat. My lungs felt like they were being pulled out through my rib cage. “Unlike you West, I don’t keep everything hidden, masking the truth at all times. I picked Avian, end of story.”
A painful half smile formed on West’s face. He gave the smallest of nods. “Then why doesn’t it feel that way?”
My bones were starting to splinter as the device embedded into West pulled at all the cybernetic and mechanical parts inside of me.
“West,” I breathed, my voice coming out as a whisper.
“Yes?” he replied hopefully. He came closer, so close our clothes were touching.
“You’re hurting me,” I forced out, barely able to breathe anymore.
“Trust me,” he said, his expression hardening. “It’s nothing like how I’ve been hurting since that night on the transformer.”
“No—” I hissed, my eyes squeezing closed.
“She means you’re physically ripping her apart,” a voice from behind us suddenly said. “You should really step away before you kill her.”
I couldn’t even turn my head but I knew Royce’s voice. West’s eyes widened, panic flashing across his face. He scrambled away from me, backing up against the stainless steel counter.
I collapsed to the ground on my hands and knees, my breath coming in and out in painful gulps.
Royce’s boots came into view and I felt his calloused hands around my arms, helping me to my feet again.
“I’m sorry,” West stammered. “I didn’t realize this thing would affect her like that.”
“You’re an idiot then,” Royce said, his voice hard. Sure I would be okay, he turned toward West, his fist balled. “That thing controls what her entire body is made of. You never stopped to consider that?”
My eyes rose to West. He looked tortured, pain at his unknown actions plain on his face. A part of me wanted to feel sorry for him, to tell him it was okay. But forgiving West was something I was getting tired of doing.
“I don’t particularly like the fact that the last remaining infected person within one hundred miles is walking around my base, but because of Eve’s insistence I’ve allowed you to stay. Don’t give me a reason to get rid of you,” Royce’s voice dripped with ice. “She’s our most valuable asset here in New Eden next to the Pulse. And you…are not.”
Royce’s hardness was startling and I saw the fear in West’s eyes.
“Eve?” another voice said from the entrance to the kitchen. I turned to see Avian looking at us, uncertainty on his face. “What’s going on?”
I glanced back toward West, guilt and shame racing through my blood.
Avian looked from West to me and I saw his eyes harden. “Did he hurt you?”
“No, Avian, I’m—” I started to say, but Avian was suddenly across the kitchen, right up in West’s face.
“Keep your distance with that thing,” Avian said. “Or I swear—”
“Avian!” I yelled, pulling on the back of his shirt. He stumbled back four steps but his gaze remained locked on West. West glowered back.
“Take Eve back to her room,” Royce growled, pushing Avian gently back with a hand on his chest. “Make her get some rest.”
After a long while, Avian nodded, tearing his eyes from West to look at me. His expression softened only slightly.
I couldn’t meet his eyes and I hated that.
The radio crackled later that afternoon. Royce was calling for the weekly meeting.
As people gathered around me in the conference room, I wondered if this was how society worked before—leaders meeting to discuss how things should run and planning how to keep everyone alive.
But before the Evolution they didn’t have to rebuild from scratch. They didn’t have to talk about where to find food, to scavenge new homes, to have to haul away decomposing bodies.
I sat at the long table, between Avian and Gabriel—Eden’s former leadership—joined by half a dozen others, Royce and Elijah included.
“Welcome, everybody,” Royce started out as he walked into the room. He pulled his chair back and took a seat. He folded his arms on the table, his grey eyes turning to meet ours. “Bet ten years ago you never thought you’d be on the board of what’s left of humanity.”
A few people chuckled, but most just gave a tight-lipped smile, not always appreciative of Royce’s harsh and blunt humor.
“Let’s go over the weekly report,” Royce said, pulling out a notepad and a pen. The sight was strange, too relaxed and too organized for our chaotic world. “Tuck, why don’t you start us out?”
Tuck cleared his throat as he stood. His eyes shifted just a little too fast from his own notebook to the faces around the table. Tuck had gone from simple watchman in Eden to leader of the Bane Removal Crew, or the BRC, in New Eden.
“We cleared block sixteen this week, and got half of block seventeen cleared,” he said as he walked to the map that hung on one of the walls, marking block sixteen with a big red X. “No issues reported.” We had created this map with the hospital as ground zero, sectioning off each block spreading out around us. The bodies may have been dead, TorBane destroyed, but no one wanted to see the hundreds of thousands of bodies lying everywhere. And the remaining decomposing human flesh was a health hazard.
“How close are we to filling the first shipper?” Royce asked as he studied the map.
“It’s only about half filled,” Tuck said. “We’ve sealed off the filled areas. It should be ready to send out in another three weeks.”
I’d seen the huge ships once, docked out at the edge of the ocean. Tuck told me they were called cruise ships and that once upon a time people boarded them for relaxing trips out on the water.
“Great,” Royce said, turning his attention to his notebook again, scribbling something down. “The quicker we get those bodies cleared out, the better.”
“And the rehoming crew?” Royce asked.
“We’ve continued with the housing scout,” Elijah said. It was always painful to look at him. He was a harsh reminder that West could have turned out so much worse. “Team one cleared block seven yesterday. We should be able to set up three units in it.”
“Team two finished up block five, as you know,” Avian said. Unlike me, Avian did have a purpose here in New Eden. He and Elij
ah had their own teams that scouted out new homes for us all to start inhabiting.
I couldn’t stand working on the rehoming crew. Finding a new home in the city meant I would be trapped here forever. Thinking about that made me want to do self-destructive things.
But for everyone else, getting a new home outside the hospital meant the return to a more normal life. One that resembled the world before the Evolution.
“I’ve also been working with them on emergency medical care,” Avian said. “Dr. Reziks and Dr. Sun have been assisting me.”
Royce nodded as he continued scribbling notes down. “Great. Gabriel, what about your end?”
Gabriel cleared his throat, sitting up a little straighter in his seat. I still couldn’t get over how different he looked with his beard neat and trimmed, his hair cut short. He looked like a totally different man. He appeared at least ten years younger.
“We’ve split civilians into two groups. The first is in charge of food and general goods regulation. There are two subgroups of this one. One half is in charge of the garden and scouring the city for non-perishables. The other half is in charge of setting up a supply store. They are currently developing a regulation system so people can go and get what they need.
“The second group is in charge of cleaning up the units the rehoming scouts deem safe. There was a former general contractor here in Los Angeles as well as an electrician. Together they are heading up a team to start in blocks three and six and make them fit to reside in. We’ve already established six homes in block four and they are currently being inhabited.”
It was strange hearing Gabriel try and succeeding in sounding so official. He was attempting to prove that he was every bit as capable of leading as Royce was. Not that he needed to. Royce might have been a genius when it came to leading the military and scientific side of New Eden, but he was often too brutal and blunt to connect with everyone else. People naturally looked to and trusted Gabriel.
“And how are our survivors adapting?” Royce asked.
“They’re… adjusting,” Gabriel said. “It hasn’t been easy for them, but given what they’ve gone through, it isn’t surprising.”