by Keary Taylor
Eden
Eden
Midpoint
EDEN
BY
KEARY TAYLOR
Copyright © 2011 Keary Taylor
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.
Published by Keary Taylor at Smashwords
First Edition Digital Copy: June 2011
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Taylor, Keary, 1987-
Eden : a novel / by Keary Taylor. – 1st ed.
Summary: After 98 percent of the world falls to a cybernetic infection, Eve learns to survive in a world losing its humanity, and discovers what love really is.
ISBN 978-1463525965
For my dad,
with whom I watched many, many science fiction movies and TV shows, making me always wonder “what if”.
ONE
“Good-bye, my friend,” Avian whispered, closing his eyes with silent words of regret that echoed through the rest of us.
We all shut our eyes as Avian pressed the device to Tye’s arm, unable to watch the death of the man who had been our family member and protector since the formation of Eden. The sounds reverberated in my brain, the hum of thousands of volts of electricity racing through Tye’s infected system. The back of my throat tightened as I heard the sharp hiss of the nanites under his skin short out and die. Agonizing seconds later, he took his last gasping breath.
Avian set down the one piece of electronic technology that existed in Eden on the wooden table. I finally opened my eyes again when I heard his suppressed sob. Bill and Graye bowed out of the medical tent silently, unable to deal with Avian’s grief in the moment of their own. I could only stand there and hug my sides, trying to keep myself from falling apart. It felt like everything inside of me had cracked.
My eyes couldn’t keep away from Tye’s body.
His lifeless form lay limp on the table, one of his legs about to slip off. His left arm rested at his side, the skin shredded and torn where he had tried to rip it off. The dirtied, bloodied wires shone from under the torn skin. His head had lolled to one side, staring emptily at me with one still human eye and one metallic cybernetic one.
I wished Avian would stop sobbing. I knew I should try to comfort him, but what do you say to the man who had just had to kill his own cousin? His tears seemed like too much of an invitation to let my own fall. But that wasn’t me; Eve didn’t cry. Ever.
Avian looked up at me from where he stood, braced with his hands on the table next to the body. “Thank you for bringing him back, Eve.”
I bit my lower lip and could only manage one small nod. He held my eyes with his own for a long moment, each of us knowing what the other was thinking. We both knew we would never hear Tye’s hesitant laughter again, never urge him to take a break from his watchful post to eat a few bites. He would never hunt through the woods or go on a raid again. Our beloved protector and brother had been taken away from us forever.
“Let me help you,” I offered as Avian started picking up the body. He graciously accepted, his entire frame trembling as we carried what was left of Tye to the furnace. We couldn’t even bury our fellow men and women in the ground after they were infected, couldn’t visit their graves. Even the destroyed cybernetics were too dangerous to keep around. They were melted down and transported away.
Avian collapsed to the ground as we slid the heavy door closed. Another round of tears consumed him as I lit the fire beneath it. I sank to the ground next to him, hugging my knees as I watched the flames grow in intensity and consume our friend.
I knew I was going to have to speak to Graye again. With how few of us there were left, you couldn’t ignore anyone. Maybe in a few days I would be able to look him in the eye but for now he was nothing but the man who had gotten Tye infected.
All it had taken was one brief touch from the Hunter. Tye had tried ripping his own arm off before the infection could spread any further. The attempt had been useless. Less than an hour later, Tye’s eye started changing. He’d turned on us within three hours and tried to return to the city. It had taken the entire unit to drag him back to Avian. Bill had had to knock him unconscious so he wouldn’t try to kill us all.
If it had taken us any longer, we would have had to shoot him in the forest and leave his infected, untouchable body for the wolves.
“Why don’t you go to bed?” I said quietly as I stared at the flames. “I will take care of things.”
“No,” he said as he shook his head, wiping a few tears away with the back of his hand. “I can handle it.”
“You don’t have to,” I tried to argue, but only half-heartedly. Saying good-bye to our friend was as hard on me as it was everyone else.
“Go home, Eve. You’ve done your job.”
Without another word, I stood and walked out of the tent, never looking back.
Small fires glowed in the darkness, scattered about in the village of tents. No one looked up at me as I walked by on my way to my own. They knew I wasn’t the reason Tye had been killed but they all expected more out of me. I was the one who always got everyone out, no matter how close it had come. Tonight I had finally failed.
I pulled the flap of my tent aside and stepped into the darkness. My worn out cot felt more uncomfortable than ever as I collapsed onto it. I stared up at the blackness above me, my arms resting above my head. The sound of Sarah’s breathing a few feet away let me know she was still awake.
We lay in silence for endless minutes, an unspoken conversation flowing. Tye’s death would be as hard on Sarah as it was on Avian, brother and sister in painful loss.
“How’s Avian?” she finally spoke.
“I helped him with the furnace but he sent me back,” I forced the words out of my mouth. All I wanted to do now was sleep. I just wanted this day to be over.
Sarah was silent again and I knew there would be tears rolling down her flawless, pale cheeks. I understood why she had not come to the farewell. It killed a little piece of us all whenever we attended one. Sarah was too tender, she couldn’t handle watching that happen to anyone, much less her own cousin.
I faintly heard her roll away from me before I fell off the cliff of consciousness into the dark.
TWO
My eyes slid open to meet the darkness above, fear and relief seeping through my system at the same time. We all occasionally screamed in our sleep, every one of us still haunted by the nightmares. Each of us was tormented by images of cybernetic infested friends, feelings of having your cells harden and turn you against everything that made you who you were.
I pulled myself up, listening for sounds of movement outside. It was early, the sun still struggling to make its way above the mountain tops. Everything was silent.
Wearing the same clothes I had worn yesterday on the raid, Tye’s blood still dried on them, I grabbed my pack from off the floor, slid my pistol into my belt, and stepped outside, leaving Sarah sleeping. The fires had been reduced to smoldering embers, the camp left with the feeling of being empty and abandoned. I headed f
or the tree line.
My boots darkened, dampened by the heavy morning dew. I let my fingers trail on the tall grass as I walked down an unseen path. My ears strained for any sounds that didn’t belong, searching for any warning hums of an ATV or the faint chop of a helicopter. The morning was quiet, but that did not mean I dropped my guard against constant danger. Dropping your guard meant getting killed, or worse.
Waking so early gave me a chance to have the quiet to myself. Though I doubted anyone would ask about what had happened the previous day, everyone would be thinking the unspoken, wondering how and why I had finally failed to bring someone home. I may have only been seventeen but they certainly didn’t treat me like a child.
The trees dropped away in an abrupt line, giving way to the ten foot tall wire fence. Five acres of garden lay before me. The piece of earth that kept Eden from starving. Everyone had a duty to perform in the gardens. We were each required to work a minimum of two, five-hour shifts per week. We were all responsible for keeping Eden alive in a way.
I quickly went to the storage shed that was camouflaged at the tree line and geared up with a pair of worn gloves and a religiously cared for hoe. I pushed back my dirtied sleeves and fastened my pack tighter to my back. It never left my back, other than to sleep. To be separated from it could mean the difference between life and death. In it I had everything I needed to survive in the wilderness for nearly a month.
As I worked my way to the southeast corner of the garden, I realized I was not alone. A figure in dirty rags was kneeling on the ground, working steadily on a row of slowly growing potatoes. It was Terrif, the oldest member of Eden. He was mute and growing frail. He knew the most about gardening though. Without him, our harvest would be half of what it was.
Terrif looked up at me briefly as I went to work on a new area that would be planted later that afternoon. His eyes met mine for just a moment; oddly grey orbs that were starting to slowly lose their sight, and went back to his work.
The garden was in its fifth year and was gaining maturity. The fruit trees had produced well the previous year and we were hoping the late start of spring was not going to hurt production this year. It was agonizing, having so little control over something so vital to our survival.
Within a year of the Fall, people started realizing they weren’t the only ones on the run and began to band together. As our colony of thirty-three came together, we knew we were going to have to provide food for all these people or everyone was going to starve. And so the garden had been planted. Eden itself might be constantly moving for safety reasons, but the garden was the center, the anchor of which we revolved around.
It was pure and simple luck that the Fallen had not realized how vital this piece of land was. There was no way to camouflage such a large piece of land. It would be all too easy for the Fallen to bomb it and ruin our way of living. It wouldn’t take long for us to starve.
As the sun started graying the sky, other’s started trickling in, those assigned to work the morning shift while the others guarded camp. Not many words were spoken, each man or woman working in their silent grief. I saw the eyes flicker to my face, the questions forming in their heads. I wanted to tell them it was Graye they should be questioning, but I would never betray him like that. If he wanted them to know what he had done to Tye he could tell them himself. It wasn’t my place.
Each of us had reached Eden in our own way. Those who had survived the Fall had figured out that it wasn’t safe to be in the cities anymore. With so much electricity and other mechanical resources available, the Fallen flocked to them. If you were smart you ran as fast as you could toward the mountains or to the open country.
I didn’t remember much of my arrival at Eden. Only that I arrived alone, a thirteen-year-old girl, mostly naked, covered in blood, but with not a scratch on me. I had no memory prior to that time, no recollection of my parents or of where I had come from. I only remembered my name. Eve.
Avian and Sarah had helped me when I needed, despite how determined I had been that I could take care of myself. Avian had just escaped from the Army that wasn’t safe anymore, just as the world was falling to ruin. He’d rescued his sister, hiding in the garage after their parents had been infected. He’d had to shoot both of them to get her out. He’d collected his cousin Tye, who’d locked his infected mother in their trailer home, and stood guard outside the door with a rifle, and together they fled into the mountains. They were some of the first to arrive in Eden, only twenty-one and nineteen-years-old.
Just as the sun broke above the tree line, Sarah joined me at my side. She carried a sack of seeds, dropping them in a shallow trench and I raked the damp dirt over them.
“How is Avian this morning?” I asked, keeping my voice down.
“He didn’t look like he had slept all night,” she said quietly as she dropped seeds. “He wouldn’t eat this morning but said he was fine.”
“I will talk to him when I get back,” I sighed as I continued to rake.
Avian was the one person who never left Eden. He never went on raids, never even worked in the gardens. He couldn’t leave his supplies and the CDU. It was too dangerous. All too often he was needed. Even though he had only two and a half years’ worth of medical training, he knew more than the rest of us did.
“People are wondering what happened last night,” Sarah said as she looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I heard them talking at breakfast this morning. They’re starting to lose trust in Graye.”
Sarah’s statement surprised me. I had expected her to say that people were starting to lose their faith in me. “Why?”
“They overheard someone talking to Avian about how Graye had something to do with Tye’s infection. We all know he can be selfish and sloppy.”
I straightened slightly and looked over my shoulder to where Graye was working. He was alone, his head hanging low. I would never say it to anyone, but Sarah was right. Graye always tried to grab just a few more things, one more treasure to take home for himself. He hadn’t noticed the Hunter creeping up on him. Tye had gotten Graye out before it was too late but it had meant the death of him.
“We can’t afford to turn against ourselves,” I said as I got back to work before anyone could notice my stiff behavior. “We all know better than that.”
“They’re upset,” Sarah said simply.
“They’re going to have to move on though,” I said, more bluntly than I had meant it. “We need him. We need everyone.”
Sarah didn’t say anything else as she continued her work. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realized she was vocalizing not only the thoughts of others in Eden, but her own. I was going to have to talk to Avian and Gabriel about it later.
I worked a longer shift than required, in a way anxious to prove my devotion to keeping Eden alive. It was unnecessary, but I seemed to be feeling the guilt Graye wasn’t. The afternoon shift started trickling in, the post in the watchtower shifting. As I handed off my tools and gloves to someone else, I realized that Graye and I were the last of the morning crew to head back.
I hesitated, unnerved at having to walk back with him, but I wasn’t stupid. It was safer to travel with a companion, even if it was just between the gardens and home. I shouldn’t have walked there by myself that morning.
We traveled in silence. We had known each other for four years now and had been going on raids together for almost three. He was a good fighter and when push came to shove, I would want him on my side.
Graye had come to Eden when I was fifteen-years-old. He himself was twenty at the time. He had been recently married and had a baby girl, both lost to the infection. It was hard to condemn him for his selfish actions; he had lost everything that ever meant anything to him. He was just trying to take something back from the world that had stolen everything from him.
We were nearly back to Eden, our journey nearly successfully silent, when he finally spoke.
“I didn’t mean it you know,” he said in h
is gravelly voice. “I never wanted Tye to get hurt.”
“I know,” I said simply as we stepped into the perimeter of camp. That was as close to an apology as anyone would ever get from Graye.
We went our separate ways, him heading for the armory to clean his weapons from the night before, me to the medical tent.
THREE
I hadn’t expected anyone but Avian to be inside the medical tent but found him bent over, working on a skin and bones foot. Wix lay on the table, propped up on his elbows, watching as Avian worked.
“Hey, Eve,” Wix said with a bright smile on his narrow face. “Look what I got on the way home!”
He held up a nearly three foot long snake, one of the fattest ones I had ever seen. “Looks like it got you too,” I said as I raised my eyebrows.
“Eh, it’s nothing,” he said with a grin again, watching as Avian treated the bite.
I just smiled and shook my head as I sat on a stump that served as a seat. Wix was the skinniest person I had ever met but made up for his small size with personality. Even all the tough warriors like Bill couldn’t tease him about his build. It was impossible to dislike the green-eyed, red-haired kid. I supposed I shouldn’t call him a kid; he was two years older than me.
“Well, that’s all I can do,” Avian said as he finished wrapping a bandage around Wix’s ankle and foot. “Let me know if it starts oozing or turns black. I want to check on it before you go to sleep tonight.”
“Well that doesn’t sound pleasant,” Wix said as he sat up, his twiggish legs hanging off the table. “Thanks for fixing me up, Doc.”
With that he limped out of the tent, his prize and dinner swinging at his side.