"Pull over."
Cheryl looked sideways at Aidan. "What?"
"Stop the car," he said, looking at her with one wild green eye.
After slowing down, she pulled to the side of the road and halted in the gravel. He reached over, grabbed her hand and put something in it. She looked at the bloody object and realized it was the thing Aidan had taken from Paige's hand just before the explosion.
A smile crept across her face as she left Aidan resting in the SUV, got out and faced north. Then, she pressed a button on the detonator marked with a triangle. Two seconds later, she felt the ground rumble underneath her feet and saw a plume of smoke rise up over Sedona, silhouetted against the backdrop of the silvery moon.
Nobody but Aidan was there with her to witness the destruction of Cyclops, but she imagined that enough people in the RT had survived to throw up a cheer as the pyramid and the omniscient, evil machine on its top came crumbling down.
After she got back in the car and started driving again, Aidan reached towards a silver CD sticking out of the stereo, pushed it in and hit PLAY. A tinkle of notes from Guns & Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine started playing. It was the same song they'd heard months ago in the middle of the desert, coming from the bar called, Black Todd's.
He started mumbling again, and eventually she realized that he was talking to her, so she turned the music down.
"I know a place…perfect place to build a cabin. There's some game, and if we get some seeds from Jeremiah, we can start a farm. There's a stream with fresh water and plenty of fish. When it rains, you can see a rainbow over it."
"Sure," she said with a laugh. "I remember how you described your camp in the Galiuro Mountains. Before we got there, I thought it was an all-inclusive resort with golden fixtures."
"So…I exaggerated a little. But this place…"
***
During the drive, Cheryl had a lot of time to think. The world was still in shambles—it was filled with Eaters and every danger was still waiting for them, but she knew this was another new beginning. They were starting over with the knowledge of who their enemies were…and how to take them down. Of course, if it was possible that now the animals and plant life carried the genetically modified virus that caused the infection, then God help them. That meant life was still as uncertain as if they were standing on a flimsy raft in the middle of a vast ocean filled with death. But, for now…they were alive. They had helped to take down O.N.E.'s stronghold in Sedona, and that was no small thing.
She knew she needed some time to mourn Mark's passing as well as her father, Patrick, Edmond, Jasmine, and the rest she'd come to know and care about. Their memories would always be tucked away in her heart. In the meantime, life would move forward for the living.
It's okay.
This time, the reassuring voice in her head had most certainly not come from Mark. It was her own inner guide, reaffirming that hope was the only thing she needed to keep going.
She didn't know if she could handle hanging out at Divine Sundaes with Hannah and Jeremiah or playing the good little farm wife to Aidan. As much as she'd found peace in the garden at Fort San Manuel, she'd come too far to sit around shucking corn or shelling peas. Maybe it would be with a trowel in one hand and a rifle in the other, but she'd keep on fighting...help take the planet back, one dead freaking zombie at a time. She wasn't deluded into thinking it would easy. O.N.E.s disastrous play for power using XCGen's franken-science to recreate a civilization made out of live and dead marionettes was a well-organized plot and supposedly being carried out in multiple cities across the world. They hadn't counted on one thing, though—people like those in the RT who believed in freedom and were willing to die to preserve that right for others.
Cheryl smiled as she took Aidan's hand and drove into the night.
THE END
Eaters: The Resistance is Book 2 in a three book series.
Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance Page 32