Saving Eden

by K R S McEntire

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2020 K. R. S. McEntire

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodies in critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  Chapter One

  The midnight air made goose bumps rise on Angela’s arm as she climbed out the cabin window onto the branches of the nearby tree. Careful not to make a sound, she made her way down its trunk until her bare feet sank into the cool, damp ground.

  Angela wasn't allowed outside at night. She welcomed the adrenaline that surged through her, unable to remember the last time she had done anything deliberately disobedient. She took a deep breath, but did not stand idle. If there were any hope of completing her mission, she would have to move quickly.

  Daring herself to breach the fence that marked her boundary line, the moon was her only source of light as she struggled to make her way through the massive garden that had been reduced to shadows.

  Angela crept through the dark until something hard hit her shin. She yelped and stumbled towards the ground, her hands and face crashing on the cold, wet dirt. She swiped at the mud that stained her clothes and glanced back at the cabin, cursing herself for being so loud.

  Angela scowled at the backpack that caused her fall. She dragged it over, reaching inside. She could tell what was in the pack by shape and texture alone: smooth apples, rough potatoes, and berries crushed by the weight of the larger fruits and vegetables.

  She wondered why her father would put food in a pack, then realized that the backpack’s shape and color were unfamiliar. Her heart began to race — she knew the sounds that she had been hearing at night could not have come from a woodland animal. Angela had long been doubtful that she and her father were truly the last two people alive on earth. There was someone out here, sneaking about at night and stealing their food. With this new discovery alone, Angela felt her investigation was fruitful.

  Angela scanned the garden with her eyes. If this pack was still here, she thought, it was likely her visitor was nearby as well. She saw a swift movement in the distance and squinted, struggling to see by the light of the crescent moon. A tall shadowy figure raced through the garden and disappeared into the night. The dark silhouette stood on two legs and looked human. The bag fell from Angela’s hand as she shrieked in shock.

  She wondered if it was one of the monstrous mutants her father had warned her about — once-human creatures born of the earth's decay. From the corner of her eye, she noticed the glow of candlelight shining through the upstairs cabin window where her father, Nathan, slept. Before Angela had time to collect her thoughts and worry about his punishment for catching her outside at night, he had rushed downstairs and grabbed her shoulders from behind.

  “Angela,” he whispered, “are you okay? What are you doing out here?”

  Angela spun around to face her father. When she saw concern in his eyes rather than anger, she felt guilty for sneaking out. She buried her head into his shirt and waited for her heart rate to return to normal.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed, wrapping his arms around her like vines. Stroking her hair, he said. “Let’s go back inside.”

  She allowed him to guide her back into their home, her prison. Placing a candle on the kitchen table, he took a good look at Angela—her curly black hair wild and her lean legs bruised from the fall.

  “Why were you outside? What did you see?” he asked.

  Angela was unable to look him in the eye. She knew the figure in the garden could mean danger, but all of her life was out in the open. The secret that there was something out there, some unknown creature that could be human, was the only knowledge she had to herself.

  “I heard something. It must have been an animal. So I went outside to investigate,” Angela said vaguely, knowing how rare finding any live animal, except for the occasional bird or squirrel, would be. Still, it was not nearly as uncommon as a six-foot-tall figure that could pass as human.

  “I taught you better than to go wandering off at night, Angela. You worry me sometimes.” His sincere tone deepened Angela’s guilt.

  “I was just curious. Anyway, I’m safe now, but I’m really tired. Can I go back to bed?” Angela asked.

  Nathan nodded. Angela averted her eyes before walking back upstairs to her room. When her head hit her pillow, she found she could not drift off; her mind insisted on replaying the events that lead to her discovery.

  Earlier that day, before Angela had dared to climb from her window into the night, her father had penalized her for looking at a picture she found in his room. The picture showed a woman with warm brown skin and dark, curly hair sitting on golden sand. Behind the woman, Angela saw gentle waves reaching towards the shore. The water held reflections of the sky above, brilliant and bright. It mirrored the sky’s endless blue eternity. She figured this must be the ocean, though she only knew of the ocean from stories her father told about the world beyond the garden.

  Angela was hit with the sudden realization of how beautiful the world must have been before biological warfare killed everyone off. It distressed her to know that she would never get the chance to dip her toes in the ocean or to speak with any other humans.

  That was when Nathan barged into the room. Confusion filled his face at the sight of Angela rummaging through his things. His eyes flashed with anger as he realized what exactly she was looking at, but the anger was mixed with some other emotion that Angela could not identify.

  “Angela!” he boomed. Hearing her father raise his voice was unsettling. His demeanor was typically serene.

  “Is this woman my mother?” Angela asked. She had never been shown a picture of her mother before, but the slim build, wild hair, and brown skin of the woman in the photograph matched her own reflection. She didn’t inherit many of her father's features, save for his hazel eyes and stubborn nature.

  Nathan didn’t answer her question. Instead, he scolded her for going through his things. Defeated, Angela marched upstairs to her room. She slammed her door for dramatic effect and stayed put as the remainder of the day slipped into night.

  She’d almost fallen asleep when she had heard it, for the third night in a row: a rustling in the bushes outside and a whistling that mirrored the notes of her favorite song.

  There was someone in the garden.

  Angela felt like a bird trapped in a cage, but she knew nighttime was the only time she could escape from her father's watchful gaze. That’s why, under the cover of darkness, she’d decided to sneak out and discover the source of the sound. Now that she was back in the safety of her bed, she mentally scolded herself for screaming like a child at the sight of the stranger. Her father would have an increasingly watchful eye now that he knew she had snuck out once. She tried to envision new methods of investigation as she drifted off to sleep.

  The next morning, Angela sought her favorite form of therapy: music. She made her way outside to the grand piano that sat in th
e center of the vast garden surrounding their home.

  She gently pressed a pencil that was half the size of her index finger onto a yellow-paged notebook to record a few notes. Angela knew that after things were gone, they could never be replaced. No matter how light her inscriptions were, the pencil would not last forever. Where would she store her compositions after her only way of recording it was gone?

  Angela sighed as she looked toward the hand-built, two-story cabin. Every inch of their home had been carefully constructed, revealing how clever and capable her father was. His potential caused her to question why they lived the way they did, using only leftovers from long ago instead of venturing out and restocking their repository. Their way of existence didn’t add up in Angela’s mind.

  She scanned their home with her eyes. Four fingers gripping the blue curtain of a downstairs window caught her attention. She saw one of Nathan’s eyes peek into the crack he had created to spy on her.

  Angela quickly removed her gaze from the window to look at the bright sky. When she was sure he hadn’t seen her watching him, she spun around on the wooden bench back towards the piano. She grinned as her fingers danced over the keys, the wind carrying the sound of her favorite song; the same tune she had been hearing the voice whistle at night.

  She watched the curtain fall back into place, but kept the corner of her eye on the cabin door. It creaked open as Nathan’s tall, round frame filled the doorway. His lips formed an awkward grin while he held in one hand what appeared to be a balled-up newspaper. Angela let him walk halfway to where she was seated before she looked up and acknowledged him.

  “What is it?” Angela asked, playing the last notes of her song as he approached the piano.

  She shook her head at the sight of Nathan’s usual clothing: a pair of faded jeans with a once-white t-shirt that was now tinted brown from grime and use. It was full of holes that he hadn't bothered to mend. She couldn’t comprehend how he could believe they were the last people on the planet and yet never consider leaving their home base to look for clothes and supplies.

  “It’s nothing. Just…you’ve gotten so big,” he said.

  “Didn’t happen overnight,” Angela replied dryly, a smirk forming on her lips.

  “I have something for you,” he said, holding out what looked like a round bundle of newspapers, held together with tape.

  Angela took it, unwrapping and storing the paper in her dress pocket. Her father was oblivious to the fact that her favorite part of his makeshift birthday gifts was the old newspaper pages he used as wrapping paper. She could not read them, but she enjoyed looking at pictures of people and places and imagining the former world.

  Inside the paper was a golden watch, its three hands unmoving against the shining face.

  “It was your mother’s,” Nathan explained. “It’s broken and a little big for your wrist, but maybe you’ll grow into it…happy sixteenth birthday, Angela.”

  Her father slipped the watch on her wrist and tightened it. Angela glanced at the similar contraption on his wrist. The hands on his watch were still slowly ticking, but Angela couldn’t help but think her father’s watch was just as useless. She glanced at both contraptions and frowned. When would they ever need to use one of these in a barren, dead world where they were the last people on earth?

  “A watch, like yours,” Angela said while touching the object on her father's wrist, her index finger following the movement of its second hand. “But you’ve never taught me how to use one. They tell the time, right?”

  “Yes, but the time doesn’t matter, Angela,” he pointed out. “It’s the symbolism that matters. I’m sorry about how I acted last night. You have a right to look at a picture of your mother. I wanted you to have something that belonged to her.”

  He narrowed his gaze as she retrieved the newspaper from her pocket.

  “Why won’t you tell me what these symbols mean?” Angela said, trying to keep her tone light. She wished he would teach her how to read and write more than music notes. She wanted to tell time and read books, maybe even write them. She was too old to rely on begging him to read to her from the books inside the tattered cardboard boxes in his room. She knew he wasn’t educating her on purpose, but the reason behind his secrecy was a mystery.

  The wrinkles that appeared on his forehead let Angela know that her casual tone didn’t fool him. He wasn’t going to give in to her innocent interrogation.

  “I have told you. They are stories,” he answered, taking a seat beside her on the bench.

  “A fairy tale?” asked Angela. She knew the plot to every fantastic tale her father shared with her before bedtime when she was younger. She adored stories about knights, princes, dragons, and good defeating evil. She longed to be transported to a world like that, to rescue someone in need or find her one true love. But the world beyond the garden gates was dead, and she knew her father’s stories were not true.

  Her father preferred reading her fiction books and fairy tales to sharing stories about the real world, but she had picked up bits and pieces of information about the world over time. She knew that there had been a series of wars. In addition to using bombs and bullets, armies had unleashed disease in the air, food, and water to kill their enemies. After the wars ended, food became scarce and what little there was to be found was often contaminated. Without food, people died off. Angela wasn't sure how her father had discovered the garden that they lived in, but here, nourishment was plentiful. He told her that having been in one place for so many years with no visitors or signs of life beyond the critters that took refuge in their garden meant there was a high possibility that no other humans were left. He wasn't willing to leave and risk death, just to confirm his theory.

  Angela thought his perspective to be selfish. She didn’t understand why, if he knew a safe place like this garden existed, he didn’t bring others along. It felt as if her father had abandoned humanity for his own private paradise.

  Despite the stillness of the woods that surrounded their home, Angela was not convinced they were the last people alive. She could tell by the lighthearted way he spoke the words, “there’s no one else,” that her father did not truly believe it either. Angela had always believed that there were people out there somewhere. The figure she saw last night had two legs and two arms; it sure looked human.

  “It’s just a newspaper,” he frowned at her. “It’s outdated, from thirteen years ago. Judging by how things were going then, I wouldn’t want to see one from today. Of course, there are no people to make them anymore. It’s a moot point.”

  Angela looked down at the ground, lost in her own mind. She wanted to understand what the letters on the paper said. It was hard to keep the things she felt from slipping out of her mouth and offending her father. She broke out of her daze-like state at the feel of his hand on her shoulder.

  “With the way things were…I don’t know if there’s anything left to look forward to.” He placed a hand under her chin, lifting her face so he could gaze into her eyes. “This place is probably the closest thing to a fairy tale that the world has left. This is our happy ending.”

  Angela averted her gaze.

  “Thank you,” she whispered politely.

  He nodded before taking his leave. Angela watched as he made his way back inside the cabin and closed the door behind him. She took one last look at the undecipherable inscriptions on the newspaper before shoving it inside the pocket on her dress.

  Angela had always hoped that one day she would wholeheartedly accept her father’s limitations, but now that she knew for certain that there was something other than mutated birds and bugs out in the forest, she needed to find out what it could be. She desperately wanted whatever she had seen to come back. Angela continued to play her music, finding the tune was the only thing that could relax her. She would never be able to erase the figure she had seen in the garden from her memory.

  Days went by and Angela spent her nights watching the garden from her bedroom window until her e
yes betrayed her and she fell asleep, but the shadowy figure did not return. Angela had plenty of time to fantasize about what or who it could have been. Her most whimsical guess was that it was her mother, miraculously alive and seeking to reunite with her long lost family.

  A less optimistic part of her was starting to wonder if she had imagined the whole occurrence. It had been dark. The figure could have been one of the monsters her father had warned her about or some strange type of animal. The backpack, which she kept hidden under her bed, was her only reminder that the visitor was real.

  Angela forced herself to forget about the visitor and her life fell back into its previous routine. Each day, Angela rose with the sun, ate a quick breakfast, and helped her father work in the garden.

  In all honesty, garden was too modest a word for the thirty acres of growth and life they called home. From Angela’s piano bench, she could enjoy the fluttering shade of a large apple tree’s leaves and breathe in the sweet scent of flowers. She could watch bees float around the nearby assortment of fruits, vegetables, and herbs, and listen to the sound of water flowing steadily from the creek that provided them with an untainted supply of water. Nathan sometimes joked about having his own personal Garden of Eden, and Angela was left to wonder what he meant by that, seeing as she had been left in the dark about that particular story.

  The cabin that her father had built for the two of them was in the center of it all. Sitting about ten feet in front of the cabin was Angela’s piano. He said that he found the piano abandoned in the forest and claimed it was the piano, not the garden, that inspired him to build the cabin and call this little slice of the world, “home.” He played the piano as a child and felt it would be nice to teach Angela when she became old enough to learn.