Eden (23 page)

We pulled the outer shell
off, exposing all the inner working parts.  We unbolted
several of the larger parts we had already completely torn
apart.  Next we unscrewed the inner casing of the
core.

A small band created the
core of the device and at the center a small blue ball glowed with
such intensity it was almost painful to look at.

“
That must be this,” Avian
said as he tapped at a drawing on the page of the notebook. 
It just looked like a ball on the page and had a long name that I
wasn’t sure I could even pronounce.  “It’s what makes the
entire thing work.”

“
What is it?” I asked as I
stared at the glow. 

“
I’m not even sure,” Avian
said as he shook his head.  “When it’s on, this band that
surrounds it spins.  I think the two of them are what makes
the electrical charge that shorts everything else out.  I’ve
never even seen anything like the center piece.”

“
If we could figure out
what it is and make it bigger, would it be able to make a pulse
that could wipe everything out?  So that it wouldn’t have to
be touching them like this does?”

“
I suppose,” Avian said as
he turned the device over in his hands, looking at it from a
different angle.  “It seems like it should be able to work, in
theory.”

I mulled that over
silently.  We had to do something.  Soon.  We had to
figure this out or we were all dead.  We were already headed
that way.

Avian and I carefully
pieced the CDU back together, frustrated as ever.  We both had
expected this to happen.  We knew eventually we were going to
find the parts we didn’t understand.  As we bolted the shell
back on, Avian powered it up and calibrated it.  He handed it
to me and I pressed the button as I held it to Avian’s arm. 
His muscles twitched violently as the shock leapt through his
system. 

“
Sorry,” I said as I
handed it back to him and he powered it down.

Avian just chuckled as he
stored it back in its box.  He sat back down and looked at me
with his intense blue eyes.

How was it possible for
someone to be so good?  We’d been so fortunate to have Avian
in Eden.  He’d given up his life in a way to keep us alive,
tying himself to this one place, a constant prisoner.  How had
I been so lucky to have him come into my life?  It could have
been anyone who found me, some twisted man who could have taken
advantage of a young girl who didn’t know who she was, didn’t know
anything.

My chest felt tight as I
looked back at him, a weird feeling forming in my stomach.  I
suddenly thought about the feeling of my hand in Avian’s, thought
about how it felt to have our hearts beating to the same rhythm,
the way it had felt when I kissed him.  I wanted to do it all
again.  I needed it right then in a nearly painful
way. 

I half whispered a
good-bye and bolted out of the tent.

My breathing came in
hollow swallows as I walked across Eden to my tent.  It took
every ounce of control that I had not to turn back around and run
back into Avian’s arms.

What was wrong with
me?  Where was this coming from?

I felt almost as if my
body was shaking with the need to go back as I lay in my bed. 
I squeezed my eyes closed, forcing thoughts of Avian from my
mind.

I expected to dream of
Avian as I slept that afternoon.  Instead I dreamt of
West.

The glass felt smooth
under my fingers, flowing perfectly, one molecule into
another.  How was it possible to make something so perfect and
even?  The glass warmed under my hand, a ghost of my flesh
forming in fog as the heat of my body met the cool of its
surface. 

I realized then that the
air around me was freezing.

Turning, my body chilled
as my eyes scanned the cinder block walls.  No outside light
tricked in, only a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling cast
a cold shadow on everything. 

My chest felt tight as I
searched for an escape.  There wasn’t even a single door, just
the window.  A bed was pushed into one corner of the
room.  This was as good as a prison cell. 

As I turned back to the
window, a pair of earthy eyes stared back at me.

“
West!” I screamed as I
put my hands against the glass.  “You’ve got to get me out of
here!”

He stared at me, his lips
set in a firm line.  A single tear slipped down his
cheek.

“
West, please,” I said,
slapping my palm against the cool surface.  “Please let me
out!”

“
Please, grandpa,” he
suddenly said, turning away from me.  “Can we please let her
out?”

I then noticed a shadowy
figure behind West, standing in a doorway.

“
But she may attack you
again.  You know she doesn’t trust you,” a gravelly voice
said.

West turned back to
me.  Another tear rolled down his face.  Slowly he raised
a hand to the glass, our hands separated only by the window. 
“I know,” he whispered.

My eyes widened as I saw
his expression harden, his eyes betraying the hurt I had caused
him.  I shook my head, taking a step away from the
glass.  I crawled up into the bed, tucking my knees under my
chin.

“
She’s not really human,”
the shadowed voice said again.  “If she were she would see
what she is doing to you.  She’d know she can trust
you.”

West continued to stare at
me with mixed emotions on his face.  He brought both his hands
up, pressing them to the glass as if he wished he could slip
through it, and push me all the further away, all at the same
time.

I saw him mouth my name
but the rumble of a noise I couldn’t identify was rising quickly in
my ears.  For a moment I was worried the building might be
collapsing on us, one floor of a building crashing down on the
next.  But the walls weren’t shaking, dust wasn’t falling from
the ceiling.  The noise continued to grow to a deafening
point.  It saturated every part of my body.

“
Eve!” I saw him scream
though the glass.  And then everything was silent.  The
next second the window exploded into a billion stars of red
death.

I jerked upright with a
gasp.  My hands wiped at my face, trying to brush away the
shards of glass that weren’t really there. 

I felt momentarily
panicked when I realized everything was totally black.  Had I
not just been dreaming?  Had I been blinded by something while
I slept?

The panic ebbed away as I
realized it was simply dark because of the muggy night.  I
leapt out of my bed as I realized that meant I was beyond late for
my night watch.  I pulled my pack on and jogged out of my
tent.

Most all the fires had
completely died out and there wasn’t a soul around as I crossed
camp.  Gripping the rungs, I scaled the ladder to the
watchtower.  I jumped violently when I was about to climb over
the ledge and a head popped over.  West looked at me with a
slight smirk.

“
Hope you enjoyed your
beauty sleep,” he said as he extended a hand and pulled me up and
over the edge.

“
I don’t usually
oversleep,” I said as I pulled the straps of my pack tighter, my
eyes scanning the trees.

“
You’ve been working
yourself to death for the last month.  And running on no
food.  If you were human you’d be collapsing from exhaustion
more often.”

My stomach turned to stone
as I recalled what the man from the dream had said. 
She’s not really human.
  West chuckled, but I couldn’t seem to force even a
crack of a smile.

West took a seat on the
bench, patting the seat next to him.  I eyed him for a
moment.  I hadn’t been in close proximity of West for a long
while now.  The last time we had touched I could have easily
killed him.  He must have known his life was in danger. 
And yet he was asking me to sit by him.  Maybe he still
trusted me, even if I didn’t know if I could trust him.

I sat.

West turned his gaze to
the dark night.  I followed, looking into the endless
star-peppered sky.

“
Do you ever wonder if
there is anyone else out there?” he asked quietly, his eyes never
leaving the stars.

“
No,” I answered
honestly.

“
I can’t imagine there
isn’t,” he said.  “All that space.  We can’t be the only
living things out there.

“
Makes you feel kind of
important though, if we are the only ones.  All that beauty
and it’s there for only our eyes.”

I looked over at West,
watching him as he watched the heavens.  His hair fell across
his brown eyes, in need of a haircut.  His shoulders were
shrugged up to his ears as he leaned back.  In that moment I
saw something in West.  Not the boy who always turned
everything into a joke, always got to me in a bad way.  But
the boy who had to live with the knowledge that it was his family
who had destroyed the world.

“
I want to hate you, you
know,” he said, though he still didn’t look at me.  “For the
way things have been between us these last few weeks.  I want
to hate you for attacking me like that, for taking the
notebook.  For all the ways I see you look at Avian.  I
want to hate you for all the ways you make me feel.  For the
way I feel every time I think about the times we
kissed.”

I felt like a knotted mess
as West finally stopped talking.  “I don’t want you to hate
me.”

“
That’s the thing.  I
can’t.  I don’t think I could ever hate you Eve.”

“
I’m still just not sure I
can trust you.”

West finally looked at me,
his eyes almost empty looking.  “That I can hate.”

I watched his face, the
way his eyebrows knitted together, the way his cheeks seemed so
stiff, the shape of his lips.  My eyes froze there,
remembering how they felt, how they tasted.  Before I could
reason with myself, I leaned forward, pressing mine to
his.

West’s hand came to the
back of my neck, pulling me closer to him.  My hand knotted in
his hair and I suddenly found myself settled into his lap, facing
him.  My pack dropped to the ground as West’s other hand
circled around my waist.

“
I want you to trust me,
Eve,” he whispered as his lips trailed down to my neck.

“
I want to trust you,” I
said as I tilted my head back, my eyes closing.

His lips found mine again,
causing fire to race through my blood.  My heart hammered so
hard I was sure West could feel it against his own chest.  The
intensity building up inside of me seemed to make my brain start
and stop.

The image of Avian’s
piercing blue eyes suddenly flashed through my head and I jerked
away.  I was on my feet the next second, pulling my pack back
on.

“
I’m sorry.  I…” I
struggled for words as I pressed my knuckles to my lips, shaking my
head.

“
Don’t worry about it,”
West said, his lips hardening slightly.  He stood and walked
toward the ladder.  “At least you aren’t running from me
anymore.”  Without saying another word, he climbed
down.

I took a deep breath once
I was alone, letting it out in a quivering whoosh, my eyes looking
up to the stars again.  My body hummed.  I felt alive in
the way I only seemed to when I did those types of things with
West.  And yet I felt sick.  I couldn’t get Avian out of
my head and I felt ashamed.

What was I doing?  I
had vowed to myself that I wasn’t going to let the two of them
distract me.  Yet here I was again, spending more time with
Avian, aching for him in a very physically painful way, and kissing
West. 

I was going to get someone
killed. 

TWENTY

Bill and Graye headed off
to the south while West and I headed east.  Now that I had
figured out I could be around West again without attacking him, I
had agreed to let Gabriel put him back in our scouting
group.

The sun beat down on us
with an intensity that was beyond miserable.  My entire body
felt tender, a deep red building under my skin.  Had I felt
pain like the rest of everyone I was sure it would be beyond
uncomfortable to move, much less go on an entire scouting
operation.

West and I walked silently
through the woods, eyes searching the tree line.  Birds
chirped in an annoying afternoon chat.  Insects hummed. 
But there were no other sounds.  No traces of any
Fallen.

“
Clear?” West whispered,
clutching his rifle tightly in his hands.

“
Clear,” I said as we
finished sweeping around the perimeter of the gardens.  West
waited at the bottom while I scaled the biggest nearby tree. 
As I reached the top, I shook its branches with as much force as I
possessed.  The entire top half of the tree swayed.

One hundred yards away I
saw a figure wave at me.  They knew it was safe to come
work.

I dropped down to the
ground and straightened my pack.  We had to be more careful
than ever these days.  The Fallen obviously knew where the
gardens where, knew we would be nearby.  It wouldn’t be too
difficult for them to track us down here.  That was why we
scouted the area every morning first, before the small crew came to
tend.