The Eve (The Eden Trilogy) (7 page)

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Thankfully, most of the trip is through desert, so there won’t be many towns, but we will still hit plenty.”

“Vegas could be fun,” Bill said, shaking his head.

“We’ll try to swing around it,” Avian said, studying the map.

“Shouldn’t take us more than two days to get there, right?” West said.

“Who knows,” I said, shaking my head.  “We could be walking out into anything.  There are likely to be more packs of Hunters.  They’re getting smarter, more aggressive.”

“Hopefully your army is quick at their job,” West teased.  “But if not, it’s a good thing we’ve got the queen of the Bane to protect us out there, huh?”

I punched him in the arm and tried not to smile.

“Damn woman,” he hissed through a laugh.  “Not all of us have cybernetic skeletons.  That hurt!”

“You’re not getting an apology out of me,” I said, shaking my head and letting the smile crack through.

Everyone in the room laughed, except for Dr. Evans.

“Do you
really
want to mess with Eve these days?” Avian asked, raising an eyebrow.

West just chuckled and shook his head.

“How is the packing of the supplies going?” Dr. Evans asked, back to business.

“The kitchens have two weeks’ worth of food packed for us,” I said.  “More of that last-forever crap, but we’ll survive off of it.  We’ve also got plenty of water.”

“I’ve put together an emergency medical kit.  Nothing too extensive, so don’t anyone go and get blown apart,” Avian said.

“We’ve collected firepower—assault rifles, grenades, the usual,” Bill wrapped us up. 

Dr. Evans nodded.  “Sounds like we’re ready to go.  Just got to wait on the vehicle.”

“You’ve become quite the traveler considering it’s the end of the world,” West said, elbowing me in the side.

“And whose fault is that?” I said, raising my eyebrows at him.  “Are you
wanting
me to knock you out today?”

A teasing grin spread on West’s face.  Avian chuckled as he slapped his hands down on West’s shoulders and steered him toward the door.  “Best not push your luck.”

After lunch, the four of us headed for an outdoors store.  We had looted all the ones that were closest to the hospital, so we hopped in one of the electric cars and crossed the massive city.  This was close to our Pulse perimeter.  About fifteen miles inside it, maybe a bit less.

Bill parked on the sidewalk, right in front of the building, and we all stepped out.  Avian checked the doors and found them locked.  Taking out his firearm, he shot it open.

The store was pretty dark, one of those double-storied, spiffed up warehouse types that only had a few windows scattered on the bottom floor.  But unlike most of the buildings around us, this one was completely free of bodies.

“Owners must have shut down pretty quick once the Evolution started,” West said, looking around the huge building.

“They were smart,” Avian said.  He pulled a flashlight out of one of his side pockets.  “Most of these big box stores stayed open until the Babies were ripping their faces off as they tried to sell them a shotgun.”

“Man, we haven’t seen any Babies in how long?” West said as he, too, pulled out a flashlight.

“Not many people left to infect,” Bill said as he headed for the clothing.  There were three classes of Bane: Babies—the newly infected, Sleepers—self-explanatory, and Hunters—those who actively sought humans to infect.  “There aren’t many babies of either species being made anymore.”

With that grim thought, we split off, the three men to the men’s clothing section, me toward the women’s.

And as I started browsing, I thought of the ability to have children.  If this really did work and we killed off all the Bane, it was going to take a very long time to rebuild any kind of population.  I knew of one other pregnant woman in New Eden besides Morgan.  Bringing children into this world felt too dangerous.  And there weren’t many people left to repopulate the planet with anymore.

My eyes drifted over to Avian, halfway across the building.

Did I possess the ability to bear children?  I’d never considered it before.  I’d honestly never even thought about being a mother.  I was only eighteen.  But when the time came, that I was old enough, when Avian and I followed tradition and that was the expected next step, would I even have the ability?

Somehow I didn’t think so.

I had cybernetic bones, a mostly cybernetic heart and lungs.  Why wouldn’t my baby making organs be cybernetic too?

Surely a fetus could not survive in a body like mine.

Pushing the thought aside, I tried to pay attention to the task at hand.

It didn’t take long to find some waterproof clothes, all skintight running clothes.  They would fit easily under my usual cargo pants.  I grabbed three pairs.  I also found two short-sleeved shirts and one long-sleeved of the same kind.

“You finding any coats or anything like that?” Avian called from across the building.

“Nope,” I replied, scanning the racks around me with my flashlight.

“It was late spring when the Evolution started,” Bill said.  “They would have stopped carrying that kind of stuff by that time.  Especially here where you barely need a coat in the winter anyway.”

“Let’s check the back room,” West said.  We all walked to the center aisle that cut through the building, leaving our findings in a pile on the floor.

There was a narrow hall that had changing rooms branching off of it, and at the end, there was a solid steel door.  Bill, at the head of us, pushed it open and stepped inside.  We had all shuffled in when Bill stopped short, covering his nose and reeling back.

The smell hit me.

I didn’t even see the source of the stench before I started gagging.

West lost his lunch to the side of me and I was just stepping out of the spray when I saw a tiny little foot poking out from behind a box.

“Avian,” I whispered when I heard a muttered moan.

We both leapt over the pile of boxes and then instantly froze.

There were two young boys lying in a nest of rags.  One couldn’t be more than ten years old.  His skin was ashen colored and covered in some kind of a rash.  His stomach was swollen and bulging.  There was a gaping bullet hole in his chest.  He was obviously dead.  He was the source of the smell.

And lying next to him, his chest barely rising and falling, was a child that looked about five.

Avian dropped to the younger child, pulling him into his lap.  He held his fingers to the boy’s neck, feeling for his pulse.  He too had a bullet wound, in the fleshy part where his arm met his chest.  It looked deeply infected.

“Pulse is very slow,” Avian said, gathering the boy up into his arms.  “He looks like he’s been starving to death, and infection has been eating at him too.”

It was true, the child was nothing but skin and bones.  I took Avian’s firearm, slinging it over my shoulder as he stood, the boy in his arms.

“We’ve got to get him back to the hospital,” Avian said, already headed for the entrance.  “He isn’t going to last much longer.”

“Bill, can you go with him?” I asked, watching Avian’s retreating form.

Bill simply nodded and followed.

By this point, West was on his hands and knees, dry heaving.

“Here,” I said, grabbing a shirt that was hanging out of a box.  I ripped the plastic off of it and handed it to him.  “Put this over your nose.  It will help with the smell.”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice shaky.  He spit on the floor and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve.  He climbed shakily to his feet and tied the shirt around his nose and mouth.

“Better?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he nodded, taking a deep breath, hands on hips.  He turned away from the body.

“I wonder what happened to them,” I said, looking down at the dead boy once again.

“I don’t think he’s the only body in here,” West said, shaking his head, still not looking at the boy.  “The smell is too intense to be coming from just one small kid.”

I swore under my breath and started looking around.  I didn’t have to search for long before I found who I assumed was the mother in another alcove of boxes.  There was a hole blown through the side of her head and a handgun rested beside her.  But she also had a massive bruise mark on her decaying skin, a perfect mechanical handprint on her forearm.   

“Shit,” I breathed.  “West!  She was infected!  Her boys could have been infected too before she shot everyone!”

“Come on!” West said, waving toward the exit.  “We’ve got to get back to the hospital.  Avian just picked him up!”

We darted back out of the building, gathering up the pile of supplies as we ran.  We paused outside momentarily.

“They’ve got the car,” West said.  “And we’re, like, seventy-five miles from the hospital!”

“Start checking vehicles,” I said, racing across the street to a parking lot.  “Maybe we’ll find something with keys.”

“Eve,” West said as we started yanking car doors open.  “You know if that kid was infected that it’s too late for Avian.  He’ll get infected.”

I shook my head, my jaw set hard.  “No,” I said as I checked another car.  No keys.  “There’s a chance the boy wasn’t infected.  And if it just barely happened, he won’t be able to spread the infection for a few hours.”

But even as I made my argument, I knew it wasn’t true.  Those bodies had been dead for days, maybe even over a week.  If the kid was infected, TorBane would be fully saturated into his system.”

“Got it!” West shouted.  He held up a pair of keys as a floor mat came tumbling out of the truck.  “Get in!”

I hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.  I tossed our supplies in the back seat.  “You don’t know how to drive,” I said, my voice breathy.

“Today seems like a good day to learn,” West said, shoving the key in the ignition.

The truck clicked and sputtered.  It had been a sitting, rusting dinosaur for six years.  We’d been stupid to think any of these vehicles might start.

“Come on!” West shouted, pounding the steering wheel.  He slammed one of the pedals with his foot and suddenly it roared to life.  “Yes!”

“That there puts it into drive, I think,” I said, pointing to the stick on the side of the driving column.

West yanked on it and the truck jerked backwards and slammed into the vehicle behind us.

“Okay,” West said, shifting the stick again.  “R stands for reverse.  So D for drive?”

“Let’s assume,” I said, my blood racing and pounding in my ears.  “Let’s go!”

D was indeed for drive and we rocketed forward, clipping another vehicle as we swung wildly out of the parking lot and onto the street.

“That woman was touched,” I said, bracing myself as we swerved madly.  “She had probably gone out to look for food or something when a Hunter must have found her.  West, this means they’re starting to come back into the city.”

The speedometer crept up to eighty miles an hour as we peeled back onto the onramp.  Just as we pulled onto the freeway, there was a figure ahead of us.  There was no time to stop and the truck plowed right into it.

The mechanical body broke right in half, completely cybernetic by this time.  The upper half of the body crashed into the windshield, shattering it.

We both screamed as the glass burst into tiny glittering pieces and an arm dangled between the two of us.

“Holy…” West bellowed as the truck swerved violently back and forth and we ran over the lower half of the body.

“Keep driving!” I shouted.  I was about to reach for the shoulders of the body, when its hand suddenly flung out at me, and wrapped around my throat.

West swore loudly.  “It’s still alive?!”

“Keep…” I gasped for air as West swerved in an attempt to put distance between himself and the Bane that was somehow still attacking.  “Driving!”

Wrapping my hands around the wrist, I squeezed until the cybernetic bones crumpled and bent and the hand let go.  Plowing the heel of my hand into what was left of where its nose should have been, its head whipped back with a sickening crunch.  The thing was instantly still.

But still carrying active TorBane.

I coughed violently, unbuckling my seatbelt.

“You okay?” West asked, wild fear in his eyes as he attempted to drive straight.  He leaned as far to the left as possible, attempting to put some space between him and the mangled Bane.

“Yeah,” I croaked.  My throat was probably bruised.  “Keep driving.  I’ll take care of this.”

I half stood as well as I could in the cramped space.  Placing my hands on its shoulders, I gave a good shove.  The body slid forward two feet and to the right.  But one of its arms slipped down the front of the hood and caught in the grill.

“Oh, come on,” West said, looking at the body in disbelief.

“Keep driving,” I repeated.  I used my boot to knock out the rest of the glass hanging around the frame of the window.  Crawling up onto the dash, I slowly worked my way out onto the hood of the truck.

As we drove over the bumpy freeway, the arm wedged its way tighter and tighter into the grill.  Finally, I simply snapped the arm off at the elbow.  The rest of the body crashed to the ground.  I tried yanking the rest of the arm free, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Get back in here, Eve!” West shouted.  “We can have it melted down later.  Sit down before I kill you!”

An amused chuckle worked its way through my lips as I carefully climbed back up the hood and into the vehicle.

“Well, this turned into an exciting day,” West said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I think the Bane are getting back into the city,” I said, pushing my windblown hair back off my forehead.  “That store was supposed to be fifteen miles inside our perimeter.  They’ll be getting back into the center of the city soon.  I thought I’d cleared all of them out for five hundred miles after the beacon went off.”

“Just another day in the world of the Evolution,” West said.  “Must have been a Sleeper that recently woke up.  It could have been inactive when you called them all out to the desert.

“For once, could the element of time just be on our side?” I said, exasperated.