The Human (The Eden Trilogy) (6 page)

SEVEN

I inhaled slowly, leveling my eyes along the sight.  And exhaling, I squeezed the trigger.

The old cup lid I’d tacked up on the outside wall of the long forgotten about house exploded as I hit it dead center.  I was having a good time with Avian’s gift.

“Perfect,” Avian said.  I glanced over at him to find a wide smile on his face.  He’d started smiling so much more since the Pulse went off.  “Not that I’d expect anything less from you.”

“Weapons and shooting are easy,” I said as I refilled the magazine.  “It’s people that are difficult.  This is just calculation and a good eye.”

A can that lay discarded on the ground down the road jumped into the air as I hit it.

“I wonder if we could make an arrow with an explosive head,” I said as I watched Avian take aim with his new bow.  “An arrow alone might not be enough to take down a Bane, but you make it explosive, and if you can embed it in their chest or something, and you’d take them out for sure.”

“Sounds like an afternoon of fun for Royce,” Avian said as he released the arrow. 

It would be.  There might not be any Bane around at the moment, but that didn’t keep Royce from making all kinds of new toys of mass destruction.  As a former weapons specialist, he had the deranged creativity to create anything, if he could only get his hands on the resources.

“You hungry?” Avian asked, embedding yet another perfect shot.  I still wasn’t used to seeing him handle weapons, and even more so, use them so accurately.  Avian was a better shot than I was with a bow.

“Ugh,” I groaned.  “I need to go hunting.  I can’t stand any more of this canned and last-forever food they have here.”

Avian chuckled.  “Yeah, I’ll admit, I miss our gardens so much it hurts some days.  What I wouldn’t do for a few fresh tomatoes or a handful of strawberries.”

“Don’t remind me,” I growled, placing my Desert Eagle in the holster at my hip.  “That’s cruel.”

Shouldering his bow, Avian took my hand in his and we slowly made our way back to the beach.

The wind had finally died out after raging all night.  The tent had flapped and whipped around, the stakes were yanked out of the ground.  The only thing that kept it from blowing away was the weight of our bodies.

Neither of us had gotten much sleep that night.  But at least we weren’t caged up in the hospital.

By morning I was feeling better, or at least I didn’t feel like I was getting overwhelmed by everything going on inside of me.

Avian set to building a fire to cook our meager meal and I stashed our weapons beneath our cots.  It was an impressive hoard of firepower I’d been building.  I had another stockpile in the closest house that looked out over the water.  The Bane were gone, for now, but that didn’t mean I let my guard down.

I stepped back outside and watched as Avian started cooking our meal.

“You were pretty aggressive with West yesterday,” I said, not wanting to talk about the event, but knowing it had to be addressed.

Avian grunted, but didn’t look up from the fire.  His expression darkened.

“Want to tell me what that was about?” I asked.  “I’ve never seen you like that.”

He sighed, placing a pan over the fire and dumping some kind of substance into it.  When he was finished he stayed where he was, kneeling on one knee.

“I keep losing people,” he said, finally meeting my eye.  “I lost all my commanding officers, my fellow soldiers.  Then I had to shoot my own parents to save Sarah.  Then Tye got infected.  Given that one was my own fault.”

I shook my head, about to argue that he couldn’t have known Tye would get infected because of a request he made, but Avian plowed on.  “And then Sarah dies of something I can’t cure.”

He ran a hand over his short hair, his mouth pulling downward in a frown.  He shook his head and I noticed then that he was trembling just slightly.  I crossed to kneel by him in the sand.  I put a hand on either side of his face, drawing his eyes to mine.

“You’re all I have left, Eve,” he said, his voice husky and low.  “I will do anything—anything—to keep something from happening to you.  I’m tired of being the calm one who always fixes things.  I’m not going to sit back and watch West hurt you.”

“I know,” I said quietly, searching his eyes.  There was regret in them.  I knew he wasn’t proud of what he’d done.  But there was also desperation.  I felt it too. 

I pressed my lips to his.  All the hurt and pain and confusion slowly melted away as his hand came up to my hair, pulling me closer.

“Avian, Eve,” a familiar voice called from up by the road.  I turned to see Tuck walking up on the beach, an unfamiliar electric car parked on the road at the edge of the sand.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.  No one other than Elijah and Gabriel had ever come to the tent.

“Royce sent me after you two,” Tuck said.  The alarm in his eyes outweighed the embarrassed flush in his cheeks at catching us together.  “Some new people showed up today.”

“How many?” Avian asked, his expression dark and serious again.

“Twenty,” Tuck said.  “They’re well-armed and seem to know how to handle themselves.”

“Twenty?” I said, not hiding my shock.  “Where did they come from?”

“That’s what’s got Royce and Gabriel so worried,” he said.  “They won’t say.  But they arrived by Coast Guard ship early this morning, just north of here.  They’ve been asking a lot of questions but not answering any.”

“Okay,” I said, turning back to Avian.  He gave a little nod, his eyes carrying a sad look, like he knew how much I didn’t want to go back into the city yet—that in reality—I wasn’t quite ready.  “We’ll head out in just a minute.”

Tuck nodded and jogged back toward the electric car.

“You ready to go back?” Avian asked, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear.

“Are you?” I asked and instantly the air grew heavy.

“I think it’s best if I just avoid West for a while,” he said.  His gaze fell to the sand beneath us.

“Hey,” I said, my brow furrowing.  “What is it?”

“I trust you, okay?  Don’t get me wrong there.  But just promise me that you’ll always be honest with me.”

I shook my head.  “You know I will,” I said, attempting to push back the black feelings trying to rise up in my blood.  “What’s this really about?”

He took a moment to respond and I could feel his turmoil.  “I know that you have mixed emotions about West,” Avian said.  “You still have some kind of feelings about him and I wouldn’t expect that to immediately go away.  You two have some kind of history that I can never be a part of.  I get that.  Just…always be honest with me about it, okay?”

He pulled me into his chest and wrapped his arms around me.  I laid my head on his chest, listening for the beat of his heart, the sound that was the anchor to my world.

“The honest truth is this,” I said, looking up into his eyes.  “I love you.  You are who I want and need to be with.  That’s never going to change.”

As we parked the motorcycle in the underground parking garage, Avian tucked a small handgun into his belt beneath his shirt.  I checked my Desert Eagle, making sure I could pull it out quickly in case I needed it.  I had no doubt a lot of members of New Eden would be packing with these newcomers.

The stairs echoed back our footsteps as we climbed the two sets of flights to the main level of the hospital.  A gust of warm air caressed my face when we stepped out onto the main floor.

I bumped the door into Graye as we entered.  There were no civilians in the lobby, which was odd considering this was the main hub of all operations of New Eden.  Instead I found Elijah and the majority of his and Avian’s crew, as well as all of Tuck’s team guarding doors and stairways with loaded weapons. 

In the middle of the room stood twenty people I didn’t know, their pale faces and bodies hardened by the world we lived in.  They held their own weapons.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Graye. 

“They’re refusing to tell Gabriel or Royce much of anything.  They want to talk with Royce privately but Elijah isn’t having it, not without Avian here.  He wants someone here in charge of security detail.”

“And you and Bill are useless?” I asked in an annoyed voice.

Graye shrugged, shaking his head in exasperation.

“Finally,” Royce suddenly said, spotting Avian and me.  “Elijah, happy now?”

Elijah nodded his scarred head.

“You two, come with us,” Royce said, pointing at two people in the front of this new group with the tip of his AK-47.  “Avian, Eve, care to join us?”

I nodded, as did Avian.  Royce, Gabriel, the two newcomers, Avian, and I all wedged ourselves into the elevator.

“Anyone makes a wrong move, don’t hesitate to shoot,” Royce said as the silver doors slid closed.

“This is how you treat your guests?” the woman asked, her voice hard and mocking.

“Forgive us if our manners are a little rusty,” Royce barked.  “But when you come into our city armed like this with no answers, we don’t serve up the welcome cookies and milk.”

The elevator dinged and we walked down the hall toward the conference room.  I felt uneasy that we were only one floor below the blue level, where the most valuable devices and people in the world resided.

As soon as everyone was in the room, I positioned myself in front of the door and Avian stood in front of the window.

“We could start with some names,” Royce said, bracing his hands on the table, staring them down with his steely eyes.

“Margaret,” the woman said, leaning forward as if to prove Royce didn’t intimidate her.

“Alistar,” the man beside her said.

“Good,” Royce said with a cocky smile.  “That’s better.  Because when you walk into our town, you answer our questions.  You heard our radio message.”

“Yes,” Margaret replied, folding her hands over one another on the table.  “Your message did promise food, shelter, a home.”

“Somehow I don’t get the feeling that’s what you’re really looking for here,” Royce growled.  “You don’t go begging for a bed armed like this.”

“We’ve never heard of another group surviving in such large numbers,” Gabriel butted in.  I sensed his attempt to smooth things over.  Gabriel was always the peacekeeper but knew when to not let things get out of hand.  “We’re just surprised at your numbers.”

“Where are you from?” Royce asked.  I could tell this wasn’t the first time he’d asked these two this question.

“Where are any of us from?” Margaret said back.  “Like you, we’re from everywhere.  Just trying to survive in an impossible world.”

“That isn’t an answer,” Royce said, leaning forward again, his voice icy.

This game was tiring me very quickly and I was having a very bad week.  The distrust and anger inside of me quickly flooded my veins.

I crossed the room and nestled the barrel of my rifle between her ribs.  “Where are you from?” I said.

She jumped, much to my satisfaction, and her face blanched all the more white.

Good.  She was still capable of feeling fear.

“North,” she said, her voice a little too loud.  “We’ve been in the forests up north.  We’ve been hiding there for the past year.”