by Keary Taylor
“We should be good for another three hundred miles or so,” Avian said quietly. “Depending on what kind of mileage this thing still gets. And if it keeps running.”
I nodded again, watching the darkness around us. It was frustrating that I couldn’t see anything. I took a little comfort in the fact that Avian could though. He kept looking through his night vision scope every few minutes.
West eased his head back up onto my thigh, a soft snore letting me know just how asleep he really was. I tried to ignore him, remembering what had happened earlier when we had just brushed shoulders. My vision was already black, I didn’t need my brain going black as well.
I watched Avian for a while. He had been so strong these last few days. He had now lost his entire family and was the only remaining human in his bloodline. His parents had been infected early on, Tye, his cousin but brother to us all, had fallen a few months ago, unwitting at Avian’s bidding. Sarah had been taken from him by natural causes. Now it was just him.
“Is it harder now?” I suddenly said quietly. My fingers felt for the wings around my throat. “To keep going now that they’re all gone? Now that you’ve lost all your family?”
Avian looked at me, a million words behind his eyes. “I still have you,” he said very quietly. “As long as you’re still around I’ve got something to keep fighting for. And them as well,” he said as he looked down at those sleeping around us. “They’re my family too.”
That swelling in my chest started up again. I both craved it and didn’t want it. It made me say stupid things.
“Are you in love with Victoria?”
Avian’s eyebrows knitted together as he looked at me. “What? Victoria?”
I could only nod. My face suddenly felt hot.
“Victoria is a smart woman and she is beautiful, but… Why would you think that?” I was surprised to see that Avian’s face looked almost hurt.
I suddenly wished I had never said anything. What had been the point of this conversation? “I just… I didn’t…” I couldn’t find words that wouldn’t make me want to jump off this trailer and hide myself in a hole in the ground.
“You’re jealous,” Avian said with dawning in his voice. A bit of a smile tugged on his lips and his eyes suddenly seemed to light up.
“Jealous,” I said, meaning to form it as a question. That was what Sarah had said I was feeling.
“It’s not a fun emotion, is it?” he said as his face grew more serious, though a tight lipped smile formed. As he said it, he glanced down at West.
“No, it’s not,” I said quietly, my eyes falling down to West’s sleeping form. “I haven’t been very fair, to either of you.”
“This is all new to you,” he said quietly. “I can’t judge you too harshly.”
“I’m going to figure this out,” I said, my words hardening my resolve. “I know I can’t keep going on like this. I will choose.”
Avian’s eyes lost their light. He gave a nod, his eyes dropping to the ground that fell away behind us.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be,” he said, glancing at me. “I know this shouldn’t work.”
“Don’t say that,” I suddenly said, more harshly than I meant to. “None of that other stuff matters. This is about you and me, not about age or social normality. Society is dead.”
Avian only nodded as he continued to watch the ground.
I might not have known what love was but I was sure starting to understand what hate was. I was getting well practiced with myself.
TWENTY-SIX
I felt too exposed, too open. I suddenly missed the mountains, the trees. Only then did I realize just how much they had protected us. Now in the open desert, I wanted to get out from under the wide sky and distant horizons as fast as possible.
The sun seemed almost blinding as it gleamed against the sand. Amazing how the Earth could change so fast, in just the eight hours we had driven, going from forest to stark desert. We had pulled off the road and into a patch of rocks and a plant Tuck had told me was called cactus for the day. There wasn’t anything else to hide us from being seen. It was poor camouflage but it was all we were going to get.
A married couple set to making breakfast, bottled pears and bread left over from the day before. I then realized why Avian had been so insistent on getting so much water. With every bite I took I felt like my tongue was sticking to the top of my mouth. I would have guzzled down an entire gallon if I didn’t know how precious our supplies were.
I helped to assemble three of our tents. Two were for anyone who was feeling overheated to go inside to get out of the sun. The other was for Tuck, Avian, and I to get some sleep whenever we felt tired. I was too on edge to rest though.
We split into groups, deciding it wasn’t safe for anyone to wander on their own. I had chosen West as my partner, dragging him with me to circle the perimeter.
“You sleep like the dead, did you know that?” I said as my eyes scanned the endless horizon. It looked like waves were rising off the hot clay.
“Do I?” he said, a smile trying to escape onto his lips.
“Yeah,” I replied with a chuckle. “I think I could have slapped you across the face and you wouldn’t have woken up.”
“Hum,” was all he responded. My stomach suddenly felt cold as the thought that maybe West had just been faking while Avian and I had talked last night. Had he heard our entire conversation?
“I kind of like this heat,” West said as he dropped the subject mercifully. “There’s something, I don’t know, comforting about it.”
“You mean suffocating, right?”
“No,” he chuckled. “I don’t know. I just kind of like it. I wouldn’t want to deal with it all the time but it’s kind of a nice change. Dry. Not like how it’s felt so humid all the time lately.”
“I’ll agree with you there,” I said as I glanced back at the caravan. Everything looked blurred from this far away. Maybe we would be better hidden than I had thought. They just looked like an extension of the rock outcropping.
West sat on a large boulder, patting the space beside him. I took one more look around before I joined him. We sat together in awkward silence for almost a full minute.
“Why didn’t you tell any of us that you had those notes? They could save us all.” My habit of blurting was becoming worse.
West looked over at me, his eyes hard to read. “Because I didn’t understand it all,” he finally said. “I’m not sure what it all is but I do know that the plans aren’t complete. Whatever makes it work at the core, the part that gives it enough power to do the pulse, is missing. My grandfather was infected before he could complete the plans.
“I didn’t want to give anyone false hope.”
“You still should have told us,” I said, looking back toward the caravan. So Avian and I had been right. It wasn’t complete. It was the vital heart of it all that was missing.
We fell into silence again after that. As the quiet settled over us I felt that there was something that West wanted to say, something was on his mind.
“What?” I simply asked.
He took a breath to speak then stopped. His eyes glanced up once before falling back down to his weapon in his hands. “You still don’t know what you want, do you?”
My eyes fell to the ground. “Why do you have to ask me that? When you already know the answer? It doesn’t make it any easier on me.”
“Because I have to know, Eve,” he said, desperation rising in his voice. “Because my head is all in the wrong places right now, not knowing and always wondering what is going on. What do I have to do to make you sure that you should be with me? What do I have to do to show you how much you mean to me?”
I looked up, finding his eyes on mine. My stomach felt like it was doing strange little spasms. “Tell me,” I said quietly. “I need to hear it.”
My reply seemed to catch West off guard, his eyes reflecting his sudden blank.
“I watched you every
day for as long as I can remember,” he started. “I wanted to help you, to make them stop what they were doing. I wanted you to be a normal kid with me. And then you were gone and I had no idea where you were. But the entire time, these last five years, I never stopped hoping I would find you again.
“And then I did. You were, are, the most incredible being I have ever met. And it’s not just because of the things my grandfather did to you. You’re strong all on your own. You care about all of them, even if you don’t really know what love even means.
“Eden is a wonderful place but it wouldn’t be anywhere near the same without you. I know I don’t fit in there, that people still don’t fully trust me. But you’re there so it’s all okay. When I’m with you, I feel something I didn’t think it was still possible to feel in this world. I feel alive, like there is still hope in this world. Like maybe things will still be okay someday.”
My eyes fell as West finished, looking down at our hands where they rested side by side. I slipped my fingers into his, picking apart every little thing I felt.
I didn’t get to analyze for long because suddenly, everything went black.
*
I opened my eyes to the washed out color of canvas, having to squint because of how light it still was. Two faces leaned over my field of vision, both filled with concern and another emotion that surprised me. Fear.
“What happened?” I asked as I pulled myself up into a sitting position, shaking what felt like fog from my brain.
West and Avian glanced at each other and I became all the more concerned. “What happened?” I demanded again.
“You… passed out,” West said. I noticed the sweat that suddenly beaded on his forehead. I glanced at Avian who just looked at the ground to the side of me. He couldn’t meet my eyes.
“It’s pushing one hundred degrees out there,” West said as he sat back on his heels. “You’re not used to the heat.”
“And you are?” I scoffed. I didn’t believe West. I hadn’t passed out from the heat. He was lying about it and Avian knew it.
“Just drop it, Eve,” West said as he pulled himself to his feet. “You’re obviously fine now.”
The conversation we had just had came back to me with force. I remembered what I had been thinking about West’s words before I had “passed out”. He had said that I made him feel like there was still hope in the world. Like things were going to be okay.
As I looked back at Avian I remembered what I had been thinking. That that was how Avian made me feel.
West avoided me the rest of the day and Avian insisted I get some sleep before we left that night. He was covering up for West but I sensed he didn’t want to be.
Once everyone was asleep on the trailer again that night I couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“What really happened to me earlier?” I asked quietly.
Avian looked at me, his eyes narrowed slightly.
“I didn’t really pass out, did I?”
“I didn’t see it,” he finally said. “West walked you back to the group but you weren’t there. Your eyes were totally blank and you wouldn’t respond. He said you two had been talking when you suddenly just… froze up.”
“Froze up?” I asked. Even as I did, I knew what he was talking about. The way I had blanked and then tripped the day before. The way I had felt like I was suddenly gone when I had nearly choked West.
“You weren’t there for a while,” Avian said, his voice cool. “It was like you were empty all of the sudden. Hollow.”
I swallowed hard, not because of the dryness or the heat this time. “Am I going to turn into one of them?” my voice sounded hoarse.
“I think if you were going to you would have already,” Avian said, his voice suddenly tight. “There’s been plenty of time for you to change, plenty of opportunity for you to be infected. I think this is something different.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know.”
The things that Avian didn’t know frightened me.
TWENTY-SEVEN
As pressure built in the air I felt uneasy. It reminded me of the night the Hunters had burned the gardens, the night our lives had been changed so drastically. The stars disappeared, plunging the night into a darkness I had never known. It was unnerving, feeling so blind and yet so exposed. There was nowhere to hide out here.
We didn’t talk anymore that night. Every conversation just seemed to turn so ominous and heavy. It was almost nice to not think about reality.
One nice thing about traveling through the desert was that there were few towns that we had to skirt around. It slowed us down a great deal having to drive around a city. There was always the risk that we would find Fallen on the outskirts unless we pressed further out.
“Pull over here,” Avian said in a harsh whisper as we approached another gas station. “Kill the lights.” Tuck did as he said immediately.
Avian jumped off the trailer, his rifle held at eye level. I jumped off at the same time, my own shotgun held firmly in hand. His eyes never left the glass front of the store as he stalked slowly towards it. I released my safety, gauging how many extra shells I had in my pocket that I could easily grab if needed.
“There’s two of them inside,” Avian whispered. At the same time he said that, I caught sight of the gleam that came off their metallic parts. Their eyes stared back out at us, empty orbs.
“Should we go to a different gas station?” I breathed.
Avian shook his head. “We most likely wouldn’t make it to another.”
“Together?” I said quietly.
“On my count,” Avian breathed. “Three… two… one.”
The glass exploded into a billion stars, followed by screams from those who were sleeping unsuspecting on the trailer. The next second, the two Fallen had leapt through the remains of the glass, barreling straight towards us.
Countless shots were fired but only one of the two dropped. By the time I had realized what had happened it was too late to fire again. My magazine was emptied.
“No!” I screamed as I sprinted toward the Fallen who was barreling straight at Avian. “Get away from him!” I leapt between the two of them, slamming my body into the Fallen.
We hit the ground in a tangled mess of arms, each trying to destroy the other. It’s steel cold hand wrapped around my throat, cutting off my air supply.
“Dis… dis…” I gasped for air. “Disengage!” I screamed out. It stopped moving immediately.
I clawed its hand away from my throat, realizing then that as I had jumped to get between the Fallen and Avian my handgun had fallen out of its holster. My hands beat at the frame that covered its neck and lower face, exposing the gears and wire beneath. I lost it then, ripping and shredding everything I could get my fingers around. I didn’t even care as the volts of electricity the infected body produced shocked me over and over again.
I sat back, straddling the now still body, my breaths coming in shaking, gasping swallows. I glanced back over at Avian only to see him surrounded by the rest of the group. Their faces were a mix of shock, awe, and fear.
Now they all finally knew my secret.
I looked back down at the Fallen, my hand rising to my throat, and took a hard swallow. In its blank eyes, I saw everything I hated about myself. All the things that were wrong with me, all the things I couldn’t remember but knew the truth about. I spit in its face and stood to walk back to the others.
“Let’s gas up and get going,” I said, unable to look anyone in the eye. Especially Avian. My emotions were pulled in two directions as I analyzed what he had just done. He’d been willing to sacrifice himself to keep the Fallen off of me. Even though he knew I didn’t need protection.
No one said anything as Tuck and Avian pulled the truck around to the hand pump and filled it. They all got back on the trailer but I felt their eyes on me as I stood at one corner of the building, pretending to be watching the perimeter, even though I couldn’t see much of anything.
&nb
sp; “Are you okay?” West asked quietly from behind me.
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice rough.
“Are you sure?” he whispered.
“I’m fine!” I said harshly, turning to glare at him. I looked at his defensive face, anger suddenly filling me. “You lied to me again.”
“Lied?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowing.
“I didn’t pass out earlier. Avian told me,” I said quietly, my eyes glancing over to him. “It was like I was suddenly one of them, wasn’t it?”
West swallowed hard, his eyes guarded as he looked back at me. “It was the same way you looked when you tried to choke me.”
I stared back at him, my insides a running, stumbling mess. “And why does it only seem to happen when I’m around you?”
West just looked back at me, hurt showing in his eyes. He didn’t say anything, just turned and walked back to the group.
Avian left a message and a cairn at the gas station, warning the second group to take extra caution. I just hoped Bill and Graye kept a wary eye out. They were tough and smart but they could still be infected.
No one slept the rest of that night. I knew they were all on edge after seeing the two Fallen, but I suspected it was mostly because of me. They might not have understood what I was before, but now they knew a few things for certain. One- that I should start turning at any moment, yet Avian wasn’t turning the CDU on me and didn’t seem concerned. Two- there was something different about me, that I could take being shocked like that, could kill a Fallen with my bare hands. And three- that the Fallen listened to me.
The pressure in the sky kept building, turning the air muggy and heavy. We stopped two hours after we had gassed up, hiding ourselves in a cluster of sickly looking trees. Tents were set up, five of them, as a precaution to the saturated sky.
Not five minutes after we had everything set up, the sky finally broke.
I’d never seen rain like that.
I kept the perimeter, Tuck volunteering to keep watch with me. I was soaked through almost instantly and it was difficult to see far. Small wisps of steam rose from the sunbaked ground, heat and cool being smacked together.